Differentiating purging and nonpurging bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

Objective: To explore similarities and differences in clinical and personality variables across three groups: binge eating disorder (BED), bulimia nervosa-purging type (BN-P), and bulimia nervosa-non purging type (BN-NP).

Methods: The participants were 102 female eating disorders patients (34 BED, 34 BN-P, and 34 BN-NP) consecutively admitted to the eating disorders unit, at the University Hospital of Bellvitge, and diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria.

Results: BED patients were older, and more likely to have personal and family history of obesity. A gradient in psychopathological scores emerged with BN-P patients having higher pathological scores on the SCL-90-R, followed by BN-NP and BED patients. No statistically significant differences were observed in personality traits.

Conclusions: Our data supported that eating disorders (namely BED, BN-NP, and BN-P) followed a linear trend in general psychopathology. Whereas personality may represent a shared vulnerability factor, differences in clinical severity suggest there to be a continuum with BN-P being the most severe and BED being the least severe.