What this Trial Is About

BACKGROUND: Binge eating disorder (BED) is the worldwide most-prevalent eating disorder. It is associated with psychiatric comorbidities and obesity, a high impact in life functioning, and high morbidity and mortality. First symptoms appear frequently in youths, who most commonly present incomplete (subthreshold) criteria for BED (precursor forms, PREC-BED). While some subjects will evolve from PREC-BED to BED, there is no gold standard to identify the clinical evolution. Information from prior studies suggest early alterations in reward and inhibitory brain circuits in PREC-BED may predict increased vulnerability or resilience to develop BED. Tools based on MRI brain connectivity analyses (MRI-BC), built on robust and interpretable connectivity whole-brain models, have proven successful in diagnostic classification and predicting certain clinical outcomes. OBJECTIVES: To study MRI-BC diagnostic markers of PREC-BED and to explore prognosis at 1 year of follow-up in a sample of adolescents with obesity (12-17 years old). METHODS: A) Transversal analytical design: 3-group (n=34 per group) comparison of neuroimaging (MRI-BC), neurocognitive and clinical markers in adolescents with obesity and i) BED, ii) PREC-BED, iii) no BED nor PREC-BED (Healthy group, HC). B) Longitudinal analytical design, pilot, exploratory: adolescents with PREC-BED will be evaluated in clinical and neurocognitive variables at 1 year. Baseline brain neuroimaging variables (alone and in combination with clinical and neurocognitive variables) will be analyzed as predictors of clinical prognosis, including conversion to BED.

Precursors of Binge Eating Disorder in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents With Obesity