Skip to main content
  • Meeting abstract
  • Open access
  • Published:

Tobacco smoking in eating disordered female patients

Background

Some smokers use tobacco in order to control weight. It is conceivable that eating disordered women smoke for that reason. Aim: to describe smoking features in eating disordered women; to show differences according to types of eating disorder and to identify factors explaining tobacco use in this population.

Materials and methods

A retrospective study including two hundred women diagnosed for eating disorders according to ICD-10 criteria. We gathered socio-demographic features and evaluated tobacco dependence with the Fagerström questionnaire (FTND).

Results

The body mass index was the same in all smoking and no smoking eating disordered patients. FTND score and daily consumption of cigarettes in eating disordered smokers showed significant differences according to diagnostic groups of eating disorders. Age of smoking the first cigarette, age of beginning daily tobacco smoking and reasons of smoking did not display any significant differences between diagnostic groups. Daily smoking was much more frequent in bulimics.

Conclusions

Our study did not allow to reveal that tobacco is used to control weight in eating disordered women.

References

  1. Neumark-Sztainer D, Story M, Dixon LB, et al.: Adolescents engaging in unhealthy weight control behaviors: are they at risk for other health-compromising behaviors?. Am J Public Health. 1998, 88: 952-5. 10.2105/AJPH.88.6.952.

    Article  PubMed Central  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Wiseman CV, Turco RM, Sunday SR, et al.: Smoking and body image concerns in adolescent girls. Int J Eat Disord. 1998, 24: 429-33. 10.1002/(SICI)1098-108X(199812)24:4<429::AID-EAT10>3.0.CO;2-D.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Stock SL, Goldberg E, Corbett S, et al.: Substance use in female adolescents with eating disorders. J Adolesc Health. 2002, 31: 176-82. 10.1016/S1054-139X(02)00420-2.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Anzengruber D, Klump KL, Thornton L, et al.: Smoking in eating disorders. Eating Behaviors. 2006, 7: 291-99. 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2006.06.005.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Eiber, R. Tobacco smoking in eating disordered female patients. Ann Gen Psychiatry 9 (Suppl 1), S87 (2010). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1186/1744-859X-9-S1-S87

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1186/1744-859X-9-S1-S87

Keywords