Overview:
Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) is an essential nutrient. The human storage of thiamine is small so deficiency occurs in a short period of depletion of B1 from the diet. Vitamin B1 has a role in metabolic and biosynthetic pathways. Low thiamine causes illnesses in the nervous, the heart and gastrointestinal systems.
Deficiency occurs from malnutrition, alcoholism and recently secondary to anti-obesity surgery, few reports and studies described eating disorders as the reason B1 deficiency.
Rational of the study:
We assume that thiamine deficiency isn't uncommon among eating disorder patients, causing neuropsychiatric effect on the illness, thus identifying and treating the shortage may improve their condition.
Methods:
We added thiamine status to the nutritional- medical assessment of our eating disorders female adolescent patients aging 12-18, comparing them with matched controls and correlating different types of eating disorders and nutritional state to levels of vitamin B1.
Results:
In the first 8 months of the year of the study we examined B1 levels in 22 eating disorder girls and found 3 who had thiamine deficiency, all with Bulimia Nervosa (of 5 BN patients). No Anorexia Nervosa patients were deficient in B1, although significantly lower in weight, but a correlation was found between weight and B1 level. No deficiency was found among controls.
Conclusions
We have found B1 deficiency commonly among Bulimia Nervosa patients that might cause overt symptoms and may attribute to the disordered thoughts which are the hallmark of these illnesses. We recommend assessing thiamine status in these patients.
