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In patients with HIV, overweight and obesity are associated with binge eating behaviors, and such behaviors occur more often in HIV than in the general population.

Overweight and obesity are associated with binge eating behavior in people with HIV, according to study findings published in AIDS.

“To date, there are no updated data on the prevalence of binge eating disorder in people living with HIV, for whom weight gain became a crucial issue over the last years,” Maria Mazzitelli, MD, PhD, and colleagues wrote.

To investigate rates of binge eating, researchers asked 1,204 people with HIV during routine visits to complete the Binge Eating Scale questionnaire, a validated tool for assessing binge eating patterns. Scores lower than 17 indicate a respondent is unlikely to have a binge eating disorder, scores between 17 and 26 signal possible binge eating disorder, and scores above 26 suggest binge eating disorder is very likely.

Three-quarters of the study participants were male, and 85.5% were White. The median age was 53 years, and 95.6% had undetectable HIV-RNA. Body mass index measurements identified 35.1% of participants as overweight and 19.4% as obese.

According to the study, 7.6% of participants were very likely to have a binge eating disorder.

“This prevalence is higher than that reported in the general population, ranging from 0.3% in men and 1.5% in women,” researchers wrote.

Of the remaining participants, 1.9% had a possible binge eating disorder, and 90.4% were unlikely to have a binge eating disorder.

Factors associated with high Binge Eating Scale scores on univariate analysis included obesity (OR, 7.68), Black ethnicity (3.14 odds ratio), overweight (OR, 2.22), hepatitis B co-infection (OR, 2.08), hypertension (OR, 1.90), depression (OR, 1.90) and female gender (OR, 1.78). In a multivariable analysis, the significance remained only for obesity (OR, 6.21), overweight (OR, 2.21), and depression (OR, 1.98), researchers reported.

After researchers excluded participants with depression, a diagnosis that could drive binge eating, obesity (OR, 6.58), overweight (OR, 2.17), and hypertension (OR, 2.16) remained significantly associated with binge eating on multivariable analysis.

“Our results push towards an in-depth study of this topic for a better understanding of the phenomenon in people with HIV, possibly identifying subgroups of this population who could benefit from a psychoeducational/psychological intervention to preventing weight gain,” researchers wrote.