Anorexia and bulimia nervosa are fairly common eating disorders, and despite the fact that 50-70% of the risk of such a disorder is inherited , identifying the genes responsible for tipping the balance toward the disease is not easy. Now, a recent study from the University of Iowa (USA) has shown that the lack of the gene ESRRA, the estrogen receptor alpha contributes to an increased risk of anorexia or bulimia nervosa.
The experiment, which was conducted with genetically engineered mice, showed that those lacking the gene were less motivated to seek out high-fat food when they were hungry (following the loss of the gene in the prefrontal cortex of the brain) and exhibited abnormal social interactions (by lose the orbitofrontal cortex gene). This effect was much more pronounced in females than in males.
Taking into account that previous studies have associated a mutation that reduces the activity of ESRRA with an increased risk of eating disorders in human patients , this research represents a great advance in the understanding of the development of this type of disease with respect to its role genetics in all of this.
“ This work identifies the estrogen-related alpha receptor as one of the genes that may contribute to the risk of contracting anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa . It is clear that social factors, particularly the Western ideal of thinness, contribute the remaining non-genetic risk and that the increasing rate of eating disorders in recent decades is probably due to social factors, not genetic, ”explains Michael Lutter, study leader.
Another of the conclusions of the study collected by the journal Cell Reports , is that the greater the restriction of calories for several days in a row, the more the levels of the ESRRA gene increased in the brain of the mice : animals, including humans, search for high-calorie food. These findings suggest that loss of ESRRA activity may alter that response, ”adds Lutter.
These results indicate that certain neural circuits could be the key to future treatment of behaviors associated with eating disorders . The next step in the research will be to test new treatments for anorexia nervosa in mice to see if it is possible to reverse this pathology.
