Anorexics Risk Emphysema, Study Shows

Starving the body may damage the lungs, researchers in Canada reported on Wednesday in a study that showed anorexics who suffer from malnutrition are at higher risk of developing emphysema.

Starving the body may damage the lungs, researchers in Canada reported on Wednesday in a study that showed anorexics who suffer from malnutrition are at higher risk of developing emphysema. “Our hypothesis is that malnutrition will cause destruction of the lungs to create emphysema and…renourishment will cause the emphysema to reverse and the lung will become more normal,” Dr. Harvey Coxson, who led the study at Vancouver General Hospital, said in a telephone interview. The study, funded by the British Columbia Lung Association, involved 16 healthy patients who served as controls and 18 anorexic patients. None of the participants had a family history of lung disease. The scientists used computer tomography, an advanced X-ray technique, to study the patients’ lungs. The thinner the anorexic patients were, the less lung tissue they had, Coxson reported at a meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago. The changes were similar to changes seen in people with emphysema caused by smoking, he said. Emphysema, which ranks 12th globally as a cause of sickness and death, is becoming more common and is expected to rise to fifth position by 2020, Coxson said. Smoking causes most of the cases in the United States, he said. Up to 4 percent of American women will suffer from anorexia at some point in their lives, according to the National Institute for Mental Health. Previous studies show that malnourished animals that get back on a healthy diet eventually recover normal lung function. Studies done by Jewish physicians in Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto during World War II found that 14 percent of people who died from starvation also had emphysema — and 68 percent were younger than 50. (Source: Reuters health, MEDLINE Plus, Dec 2003)