Doctors may miss male eating disorders

STANFORD, Calif., May 2 (UPI) -- Boys of all races, as well as ethnicities overall, with eating disorders may be overlooked by U.S. physicians, a new study says.

Researchers at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine compared 104 boys ages 8 to 19 who had eating disorders with about 1,004 similarly aged girls who had an eating disorder. Physicians are accustomed to diagnosing the condition in white teenage girls.

Eating-disorder specialist Dr. Rebecka Peebles found boys were less likely than girls to have used purging behaviors, such as vomiting or using laxatives, to control their weight in the month prior to the study.

Boys were also more likely to be diagnosed with an Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified -- in other words, not anorexia or bulimia -- than girls. The comparison was 62.2 percent of boys vs. 49.1 percent of girls.

The findings will be presented at the International Eating Disorders Conference in Baltimore.

"We're taught to be alert for patients who express a desire to be thin," Peebles said in a statement. "But clinically, boys often talk about wanting to be more fit and eat healthy, which doesn't set off the same kind of alarm bells."