Advances in understanding of eating disorders

Building on their discovery of a gene linked to eating disorders in humans, a team of researchers at the University of Iowa has now shown that loss of the gene in mice leads to several behavioural abnormalities that resemble behaviours seen in people with anorexia nervosa.

The team, led by Michael Lutter, MD, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry in the UI Carver College of Medicine, found that mice that lack the oestrogen-related receptor alpha (ESRRA) gene are less motivated to seek out high-fat food when they are hungry and have abnormal social interactions. The effect was stronger in female mice, which also showed increased obsessive-compulsive-like behaviours.

The study also shows that ESRRA levels are controlled by energy status in the mice. Restricting calorie intake to 60 percent of normal over several days significantly increased levels of ESRRA in the brains of normal mice.

“Decreased calorie intake usually motivates animals, including humans, to seek out high-calorie food. These findings suggest that loss of ESRRA activity may disrupt that response,” Lutter says.

Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are common and severe mental illnesses. Lutter notes that although 50 to 70 percent of the risk of getting an eating disorder is inherited, identifying the genes that mediate this risk has proven difficult. Learn more about the treatment of eating disorders at UI Hospitals and Clinics.

ESRRA is a transcription factor—a gene that turns on other genes. Lutter and his colleagues previously found that a mutation that reduces ESRRA activity is associated with an increased risk for eating disorders in human patients. Although ESRRA is expressed in many brain regions that are disrupted in anorexia, almost nothing was known about its function in the brain. In the new study Lutter’s team manipulated ESRRA in mice to investigate the gene’s role in behaviour. University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics