Medical Comorbidities, Nutritional Markers, and Cardiovascular Risk Markers in Youth With ARFID

Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) is common among populations with nutrition-related medical conditions. Less is known about the medical comorbidity/complication frequencies in youth with ARFID. We evaluated the medical comorbidities and metabolic/nutritional markers among female and male youth with full/subthreshold ARFID across the weight spectrum compared with healthy controls (HC).

In youth with full/subthreshold ARFID (n = 100; 49% female) and HC (n = 58; 78% female), we assessed self-reported medical comorbidities via clinician interview and explored abnormalities in metabolic (lipid panel and high-sensitive C-reactive protein [hs-CRP]) and nutritional (25[OH] vitamin D, vitamin B12, and folate) markers.

Youth with ARFID, compared with HC, were over 10 times as likely to have self-reported gastrointestinal conditions (37% vs. 3%; OR = 21.2; 95% CI = 6.2-112.1) and over two times as likely to have self-reported immune-mediated conditions (42% vs. 24%; OR = 2.3; 95% CI = 1.1-4.9). ARFID, compared with HC, had a four to five times higher frequency of elevated triglycerides (28% vs. 12%; OR = 4.0; 95% CI = 1.7-10.5) and hs-CRP (17% vs. 4%; OR = 5.0; 95% CI = 1.4-27.0) levels.

Self-reported gastrointestinal and certain immune comorbidities were common in ARFID, suggestive of possible bidirectional risk/maintenance factors. Elevated cardiovascular risk markers in ARFID may be a consequence of limited dietary variety marked by high carbohydrate and sugar intake.