Genetic link for eating disorders discovered

Professor Howard Steiger from McGill University, Montreal told a conference in Adelaide about the discovery in epigenetics, which explaines how adverse development can cause mental health problems.

"The science of epigenetics is relatively new. Epigenetics helps explain how adverse development, stress, malnutrition and other influences can affect development of mental-health problems - including eating disorders," The Age quoted Steiger as telling the National Eating Disorders Collaboration National Workshop.

According to Steiger, epigenetics would play a growing role in understanding eating disorders.

"It's very significant. If eating disorders are about anything, they're about the ways in which environments switch on hereditary vulnerabilities," the paper quoted him as saying.

"It will give us a better understanding [about] how it is that some people develop an eating disorder. It's not due to moral weakness or character flaws, but real susceptibilities, for which we can find real physical evidence," he said.

By identifying the genes Professor Steiger hopes to develop a test and even medication.

The findings of the study were presented at a conference in Adelaide last week.