Background Binge eating disorder (BED) is known to be one of the most prevalent eating disorders, with many underlying possible neurobiological contributors. Among these, the light has been shed on plasma ghrelin as a possible contributor in the pathophysiology of BED owing to its orexigenic actions. However, there is limited research on the demographic and clinical correlates of bingeing severity and their proposed relation to plasma ghrelin. Aim This research aimed to study the baseline demographic characteristics in a sample of patients diagnosed with BED and measure the pre-prandial ghrelin levels and its correlation to the severity of bingeing and BMI. Patients and methods A total of 60 patients diagnosed with BED were recruited through, and different demographic characteristics were studied including sex, age group, level of education, marital status, and occupation, in addition to the past history of any psychiatric disorder, history of previous dieting, measuring the BMI and severity of bingeing using the binge eating scale, and pre-prandial sampling of plasma ghrelin. Results The majority of participants were females, and this was an independent risk factor, along with BMI that were associated with the severity of bingeing (P = 0.018, 0.046, respectively). The levels of ghrelin were significantly negatively correlated with BMI (r=–0.261, P = 0.044), and the severity of binging was positively correlated with BMI (r = 0.257, P = 0.047). Conclusion BED is a more prevalent diagnosis among females, with a significant correlation between the severity of bingeing and increased BMI. Further studies are needed to clarify the role of ghrelin in relation to the bingeing severity in BED.
Abdelfattah et al. (Sat,) studied this question.