Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0038187 (starvation)
 24,951 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Although the majority of patients with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa develop these disorders in their teens and 20s, some patients develop an eating disorder in their 30s, 40s, or 50s. We present a subgroup of patients with the following pattern of symptoms and historical detail: (1) severe sexual and physical abuse by family members; (2) relatively good premorbid professional and marital adjustment (considering later difficulties) though characterized by (3) hypomania, binge eating, and morbid obesity. A pronounced shift in eating behaviors follows (4) medical trauma (e.g., injury, cancer, surgery) that occurs after age 30, interrupts previous hypomanic adaptation, and leads to severe restriction, purging, and dramatic weight loss (e.g., 100 lb). Although only one patient met full criteria for anorexia nervosa, weight loss and starvation were serious enough to provoke further medical crises in all patients. Finally, (5) during both weight loss and weight restoration patients demonstrated significant dissociative disturbance, including dissociated mood and personality states (i.e., multiple personality disorder), self-destructive behavioral episodes repeating early trauma, and avoidance of food as a way to manage PTSD symptoms.
 ...
PMID:Early trauma, dissociation, and late onset in the eating disorders. 777 68

The tragic life of Vincent van Gogh is summarized, emphasizing his early departure from formal education, failure as a successful salesman in the art world, attempt at religious studies, difficulty with female and family relationships, return to the art world, and tendencies toward extremes of poor nutrition or near self-starvation and excessive drinking and smoking. In Paris he joined the Impressionists, but drank very heavily both absinthe and cognac. Southward he went to Arles and was joined by Paul Gauguin, with whom he had major personality problems, causing van Gogh to cut off part of his left ear. He experienced paranoid ideation and confinement in mental institutions in Arles, and then returned to Paris and onto Auvers-sur-Oise, where he committed suicide at age 37. Possible physical diagnoses include glaucoma, Meniere's disease, acute intermittent porphyria, and chronic lead poisoning, but these diagnoses seem unlikely. Possible psychiatric diagnoses include borderline personality disorder, anxiety-depressive disorder with episodes of depression and hypomania, and also paranoid schizophrenia. Van Gogh did not have spontaneous seizures and, therefore, did not have epilepsy. Before he began to drink heavily, when he was near starvation, he had "fainting fits," and after drinking, especially absinthe, a convulsant drug, he continued to have similar attacks. His episodes of unconsciousness can be well explained by chronic malnutrition and alcohol abuse, only possibly exacerbated by drinking large quantities of absinthe. Although van Gogh is an excellent example of the Geschwind syndrome, at times associated with temporal lobe epilepsy, this fact does not establish such an epilepsy. Thus, the syndrome is an orphan without the parent condition.
 ...
PMID:A reappraisal of the possible seizures of Vincent van Gogh. 1590 45