Serum peripheral markers for inflammation in adolescents with anorexia nervosa

Abstract

Background

There is a limited number of studies comparing the levels of inflammation in adolescent patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) and healthy controls based on complete blood count and platelet parameters.

Methods

This study is a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of 53 drug-naive patients with AN and 53 healthy controls.

Results

Significant differences were observed for WBC (white blood cell), neutrophil, MCV (mean corpuscular volume), MCH (mean corpuscular haemoglobin) and neutrophils/lymphocytes ratio (NLR) between the study groups. Patients with AN had lower WBC, neutrophiles and NLR values. But there was no difference between the groups in terms of inflammation-related platelet parameters. A strong positive correlation between BMI (body mass index) and PLT (platelet), PCT (plateletcrit) was determined in the patient group (r = 0.454, p = 0.001; r = 0.386, p = 0.007). Inflammation-related parameters may increase as BMI increases with nutrition and weight restoration.

Conclusions

The present study provides further evidence for level of inflammation in these patients does not increase during the acute period, unlike other mental diseases.

Keywords:

• Anorexia nervosa
• complete blood count
• adolescent
• platelet
• inflammation

Acknowledgement

None.

Disclosure statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Author contributions statement

All the authors made substantial contributions to conception and design, and/or acquisition of data, and/or analysis and interpretation of data; participated in drafting the article and revising it; and gave final approval of the submitted version. HÜ has the study conception, designed the study, performed analyses and interpretation of data, and drafting of the manuscript; BGC participated in interpretation of data and drafting of the manuscript. ABEY and NPF involved in the acquisition of data. HÜ and NPF made critical revisions. All authors made important intellectual content to the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.