Psychosomatic vulnerability and eating disorders

Many arguments, epidemiological, clinical, and psychosomatic, plead in favo ur afa vulnerability to the expression of ailments with a psychosomatic com ponents in patients suffering from eating disorders. III a case-control stu dy of 64 patients with eating disorders (32 anorexics, 32 bulimics) and 74 matched controls, the authors found a greater vulnerability to the expressi on of psychosomatic ailments (asthma, migraine, eczema, urticaria) in the p atient groups. There rc ns no significant difference in the psychosomatic v ulnerability of the anorexic patients mid the bulimic patients. While migra ine was more often and significatively encountered in the bulimic patients and eczema was male significatively frequent in the anorexics patients. An alexithymic dimension was found more frequently in the patients, but non thymo-dependent alexithymia was not predictive of psychosomatic vulnerabil ity except for migraine disease.