Demystifying the Genetics of Eating Disorders – Part I
Today I thought I’d take the time to do an overview of what researchers know about the genetics of eating disorders and try to clear up some common misconceptions. The bulk of the content in this blog post comes from a very nice review paper published in 2011 by Drs. Stephanie Zerwas and Cynthia Bulik on the genetics and epigenetics of eating disorders. In an effort to keep blog posts short, this will be a multi-part mini-series.
When it comes to the genetics of eating disorders, there are two main questions that research ask: What is the relative contribution of genetic factors to eating disorder behaviours? And what are those genetic factors? I’ll talk about research attempting to answer the first question in this post and the second question in my next post.
In order to understand the role that genetics plays in influencing eating disorder behaviours, researchers use family, … Continue reading →