Prospects for beating bulimia.

People suffering from bulimia nervosa, most of them women, usually try to hide their repeated bouts of binge eating and purging. So it comes as no surprise that scientists know little about the long-term prospects for recovery, either on one's own or after various types of treatment with psychoactive drugs and psychotherapy.

A statistical synthesis of existing data on this topic, published in the March American Journal of Psychiatry, suggests that about half of the women initially diagnosed with bulimia shed their symptoms completely after 5 to 10 years, whether they get treatment or not. Another 20 percent of the women still display the disorder, while the rest exhibit problems with bingeing and purging that fall short of a formal diagnosis of bulimia.

Bulimia treatments may speed the recovery of women who would stop bingeing and purging on their own after 5 to 10 years, suggest Pamela K. Keel and James E. Mitchell of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Nonetheless, in the first 4 years after an initial diagnosis, about one-third of those who recover experience a relapse, the researchers report.

The analysis combined 88 studies that tracked a total of 2,194 bulimic women for 6 months to 10 years.