Total Serum Cholesterol Levels andtheir Relationship to Some Psychological Characteristics in Female Patients with Anorexia Nervosa

Overview

The relationship between serum cholesterol and the human psyche has been recently often investigated. A relationship between total serum cholesterol and results of psychological tests and totalserum cholesterol and subjective evaluation of the clinical state of the patient done by the physician was sought. This is a retrospective study using the standard tests performed in hospitalisedpatients with mental anorexia (MA) - total serum cholesterol, psychological questionnaire (theHigh School Personality Questionnaire - HSPQ) and CGI (Clinical Global Impression). The samplecomprises 18 female MA patients (F50.0 according to IDC-10) within the age range from 12 to 17years. We correlated total serum cholesterol with the results of the HSPQ and total serum cholesterol with CGI in each patient. No direct correlation between serum levels of total cholesterol atthe beginning of hospitalisation and any of the psychological characteristics included in theHSPQ was found using the Spearman’s correlation coefficient. When the whole sample was divided into 2 sub. samples according to numeric values of the HSPQ, a significant difference (p

Key words:
total serum cholesterol, anorexia nervosa, HSPQ, CGI.