Hair Analysis for the Diagnosis of Eating Disorders

Eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia affect many young women between the ages of 12 and 25, and are now starting to be seen in older women and even men. But they've traditionally been very hard to diagnose. For one thing, people with these disorders may not know they have a problem, or they may deny it. And there haven't been any lab tests available to make diagnosis easier.

Until now.

Scientists at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah have developed a test that can determine nutritional status through the analysis of hair strands. This test so far has an 80% success rate in detecting eating disorders.

Hair analysis is not a new idea. There have been laboratories doing this kind of testing for more than 30 years. Proponents of hair analysis have said that it can be used to determine not only the levels of minerals in the body but also a person's susceptibility to certain diseases. Meanwhile, opponents of this testing have claimed that it's not reliable, that no "normal" levels have been determined for the minerals it can supposedly detect, and that it's been used to sell nutritional supplements to people who didn't really need them. But even these claims are based on information that's as much as 20 years old.

What the BYU researchers have developed seems to be a different way to analyze hair. Their test measures not minerals but the ratio of the elements carbon and nitrogen. And it's accurate enough that it can be performed on only five strands of hair. Plus, its developers believe that it can be used even after diagnosis, to determine how well a patient is responding to treatment.

The new test does have some "bugs" that will need to be worked out. For example, it gives a false positive for people who are vegetarians but don't have eating disorders. So there's still work to be done before it will be ready for use by physicians. And even when it is ready, some doctors feel that it should be only one of several factors taken into account when a diagnosis of an eating disorder is being considered.

But it's the first objective measurement that anyone has come up with for these conditions. This in itself is a huge step forward for researchers. And since eating disorders can affect both mental and physical health, even to the point of becoming life-threatening, it could also be a huge benefit for physicians treating these conditions-and for their patients.