神経性やせ症のQuality of Lifeについて

Quality of life (QOL) is important as an indicator of recovery of patients with anorexia nervosa (AN). Recently, AN patients' QOL has been investigated from different perspective such as influencing factors. In the present article, using PubMed, the authors performed a search for the research articles that were published between January 1,2000 and December 31,2016 and selected the articles focusing on QOL of patients with AN to review them. As a result of that, it was revealed that AN patients had lower QOL even after recovery than healthy controls and those who still had partial symptoms of eating disorder or had psychiatric comorbidity reported lowered QOL. From the content of QOL subscale, it was revealed that AN patients expressed higher level of dissatisfaction with family environment than patients with other type of eating disorder. Moreover, recently, it has been pointed out that patients with AN might not be able to evaluate their own QOL precisely because of low body weight that could negatively affect their cognitive function and denial of clinical condition. Summing up these findings, the authors suggested that although evaluating QOL is clinically important, we should be careful about the interpretation of the results.