[Clinical application of the dexamethasone suppression test in the differentiation of subgroups in anorexia nervosa]

This paper analyzes the usefulness of DST to identify subgroups in 27 patients with anorexia nervosa. The results obtained from this investigation don't show significant differences between the suppressors and nonsuppressors based on any of the following variables: weight loss, age, duration of the illness, weight at admittance, percentage of ideal weight and cortisol and ACTH baseline levels. However, we have found a correlation between substantially underweight patients (less than 75% of the ideal weight) and nonsuppression, and between bulimic episodes and suppression. 74.1% of our patients had abnormal DST. The DST does not appear to be useful to establish anorexia nervosa subgroups.