Cardiovascular stress reactivity and recovery in bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

Objective: Stress plays a role in the pathology of bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorders, but it is unclear whether they involve similar disturbances of biological stress responses.

Patients And Methods: We recruited 25 patients with binge eating behavior, 12 with bulimia nervosa (BN) and 13 with binge eating disorder (BED), and compared them with 13 obese non-binge eaters (NBED). We measured heart rate variability in response to mental stress tasks, and concentrations of leptin, glucose and insulin in the blood.