Helena L Davies

• King's College London

Background Eating disorders are debilitating illnesses that often co-occur with other psychiatric disorders and somatic diseases. Evidence indicates that the incidence of eating disorders has been increasing. We first examine the landscape of EDs over time, including the COVID-19 period, via assessing the incidence of anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia...

Objective This study aimed to identify and categorise under-recognised weight loss behaviours in individuals with eating disorders, addressing diagnostic gaps. Method We text mined free-text responses from 1,675 participants with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge-eating disorder in the Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study...

Eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, are psychiatric conditions associated with high mortality rates, particularly due to suicide. Although eating disorders are strongly associated with suicidal ideation, attempts, and fatalities, the precise relationship between these conditions remains poorly un...

Eating disorders (EDs)-including anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder-are clinically distinct, but exhibit high symptom overlap and comorbidity. Genomic analyses to date have only examined AN. We conducted the first genome-wide association meta-analysis of binge-eating behaviour (BE; 39,279 cases, 1,227,436 controls, al...

Depression is a risk factor for the later development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but evidence for the genetic relationship is mixed. Assessing depression symptom-specific genetic associations may better clarify this relationship. To address this, we conducted genome-wide meta-analysis (a genome-wide association study, GWAS) of the nine depression...

Background: This paper introduces the UK Biobank (UKB) second mental health questionnaire (MHQ2), describes its design, the respondents and some notable findings. UKB is a large cohort study with over 500,000 volunteer participants aged 40-69 years when recruited in 2006-2010. It is an important resource of extensive health, genetic and biomarker d...

This study represents the first large-scale investigation of rare (<1% population frequency) copy number variants (CNVs) in anorexia nervosa (AN). Large, rare CNVs are reported to be causally associated with anthropometric traits, neurodevelopmental disorders, and schizophrenia, yet their role in the genetic basis of AN is unclear. Using genome-wid...

Eating disorders arise from a complex interaction of genetic and environmental influences. Here we provide comprehensive population-level estimates of the heritability of eating disorders and their genetic relationships with various mental health and cardiometabolic disorders (CMDs), expanding beyond genome-wide association studies. We examined the...

Antidepressants are the most common treatment for moderate or severe depression. Side effects are crucial indicators for antidepressants, but their expression varies widely among individuals. In this study, we leveraged genetic and medical data from self-reported questionnaires in the Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) study to build pr...

Objective: The United Kingdom Eating Disorders Genetics Initiative (EDGI UK), part of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Mental Health BioResource, aims to deepen our understanding of the environmental and genetic etiology of eating disorders. EDGI UK launched in February 2020 and is partnered with the UK eating disorders c...

Objectives: People with bipolar disorder who also report binge eating have increased psychopathology and greater impairment than those without binge eating. Whether this co-occurrence is related to binge eating as a symptom or presents differently across full-syndrome eating disorders with binge eating is unclear. Methods: We first compared netw...

Depression is a risk factor for the later development of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but evidence for their genetic relationship is mixed. Assessing depression symptom specific genetic associations may better clarify this relationship. Using data from the UK Biobank, the GLAD Study and PROTECT, we performed the largest genome-wide meta-analyses (GWAS...

The Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) is a common screening tool for bipolar disorder that assesses manic symptoms. Its utility for genetic studies of mania or bipolar traits has not been fully examined. We psychometrically compared the MDQ to self-reported bipolar disorder in participants from the United Kingdom National Institute of Health and Ca...

Objective The Eating Disorders Genetics Initiative United Kingdom (EDGI UK), part of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Mental Health BioResource, aims to deepen our understanding of the environmental and genetic aetiology of eating disorders. EDGI UK launched in February 2020 and is partnered with the UK eating disorders ch...

Objective The disruption caused by the COVID‐19 pandemic has been associated with poor mental health, including increases in eating disorders and self‐harm symptoms. We investigated risk and protective factors for the new onset of these symptoms during the pandemic. Method Data were from the COVID‐19 Psychiatry and Neurological Genetics study and...

Objective: The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with poor mental health, including increases in eating disorder and self-harm symptoms. We investigated risk and protective factors for new onset of these symptoms during the pandemic. Method: Data were from the COVID-19 Psychiatry and Neurological Genetics study and the...

Objective: The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with poor mental health, including increases in eating disorder and self-harm symptoms. We investigated risk and protective factors for new onset of these symptoms during the pandemic. Method: Data were from the COVID-19 Psychiatry and Neurological Genetics study and the...

Disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated virus suppression measures have affected many worldwide but those already suffering from psychological distress may have been especially vulnerable. We investigated associations between pre-pandemic psychological distress and disruptions to healthcare, economic activity, housing, and c...

Background Understanding and improving outcomes for people with anxiety or depression often requires large sample sizes. To increase participation and reduce costs, such research is typically unable to utilise “gold-standard” methods to ascertain diagnoses, instead relying on remote, self-report measures. Aims Assess the comparability of remote di...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted lives and livelihoods, and people already experiencing mental ill health may have been especially vulnerable. Aims Quantify mental health inequalities in disruptions to healthcare, economic activity and housing. Method We examined data from 59 482 participants in 12 UK longitudinal studies with data...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic with its associated virus suppression measures have disrupted many domains of life for many people. Increasingly it is recognised that negative disruptive impacts of the pandemic are not experienced equally and may exacerbate existing inequalities. People already suffering from psychological distress may have been e...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated virus suppression measures have disrupted lives and livelihoods, potentially exacerbating inequalities. People already experiencing mental ill-health may have been especially vulnerable to disruptions. Aim: Investigate associations between pre-pandemic psychological distress and disruptions durin...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated virus suppression measures have disrupted lives and livelihoods, potentially exacerbating inequalities. People already experiencing mental ill-health may have been especially vulnerable to disruptions. / Aim: Investigate associations between pre-pandemic psychological distress and disruptions dur...

Enabled by advances in high throughput genomic sequencing and an unprecedented level of global data sharing, molecular genetic research is beginning to unlock the biological basis of eating disorders. This invited review provides an overview of genetic discoveries in eating disorders in the genome-wide era. To date, five genome-wide association stu...