Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) display elevated anxiety and attention biases (ABs) in threat processing. Attention bias modification treatment (ABMT) is considered promising for anxiety disorders, but its potential for AN is limited. In this study, 154 young women hospitalised because of AN were assigned to ED-related and anxiety-related threat stimuli, or to a non-ABMT intervention control condition in a randomized control trial. Hundred-and-ten patients completed the study. ABMT was an add-on to the regular inpatient treatment. Research participants completed two pretreatment training sessions and eight biweekly sessions of ABMT. AB, ED-related symptoms, depression, anxiety and stress were assessed before and after ABMT in the research groups, and, similarly, 5 weeks apart, in the controls. We found that despite the different patterns of change in AB between the three groups following ABMT, the reduction in AB, or the between-group differences in AB-reduction, were not significant. While the severity of ED-symptoms, depression, anxiety and stress was reduced following ABMT, or control condition, in all groups, there were no between-group differences in these changes. Changes in AB were not correlated with baseline and pre-post-treatment changes in ED-related and comorbid symptomatology. Methodological and inpatient treatment-related considerations may explain our negative ABMT-related results.

Aim To examine the prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and related post-surgical weight loss in adolescents with severe obesity seeking bariatric surgery. Methods The study population included 84 adolescents (age 13-19 years; 44 males, 40 females) with severe obesity who sought bariatric surgery at the Sheba Medical Centre in Israel during the years 2011-2017. Anthropometric and clinical data were collected from medical records. A subgroup of 20 participants filled questionnaires that evaluated ADHD-like symptoms, eating behaviours and quality of life. Data on adolescents that ultimately underwent surgery (n = 45) were also obtained. Results The prevalence of ADHD was 28.6% in adolescents seeking bariatric surgery, much higher than that of the general adolescent population of Israel (17.1%, P < .001). There were no significant differences in reductions of weight, body mass index, body mass index standard deviation scores and body fat percent between participants with or without ADHD. In the subgroup that filled questionnaires, higher scores on ADHD-Rating Scale at baseline were associated with greater excess weight loss. Conclusion The prevalence of ADHD in adolescents seeking bariatric surgery was very high. Diagnosed ADHD was not related to post-surgical weight loss, whereas baseline ADHD-related behaviour was associated with higher post-surgical weight loss.

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) have been shown to display both elevated anxiety and attentional biases in threat processing. In this study, we compared threat-related attention patterns of patients with AN restricting type (AN-R; n = 32), AN binge/purge type (AN-B/P; n = 23), and healthy controls (n = 19). A dot-probe task with either eating disorder-related or general and social anxiety-related words was used to measure attention patterns. Severity of eating disorder symptoms, depression, anxiety, and stress were also assessed. Patients with AN-R showed vigilance to both types of threat words, whereas patients with AN-B/P showed avoidance of both threat types. Healthy control participants did not show any attention bias. Attention bias was not associated with any of the demographic, clinical, and psychometric parameters introduced. These findings suggest that there are differential patterns of attention allocation in patients with AN-R and AN-B/P. More research is needed to identify what causes/underlies these differential patterns.