Abstract
Objective
We longitudinally explored frequency of disordered eating among transgender and nonbinary
(TGNB) adolescents and explored trends by gender identity and gender-affirming care.
Methods
Participants completed an abbreviated version of the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire
(EDE-Q) at baseline, 3, 6, and 12 months after establishing care in a gender clinic.
We analyzed descriptive statistics and multivariate linear regression analyses.
Results
Of the 91 TGNB adolescent participants, 61% were transmasculine, 30% transfeminine,
and 7% nonbinary/gender-fluid. Among TGNB adolescents, disordered eating thoughts/behaviors
were frequently endorsed with 26% of participants engaging in any occurrence of binge
eating, 27% limiting the amount of food they ate, and 30% excluding foods from their
diet. Forty percent of participants reported any occurrence of at least 1 disordered
eating behavior and 17% at least 3 behaviors. Abbreviated EDE-Q responses did not
differ significantly by sex assigned at birth, gender identity, gender-affirming medications,
or time spent receiving gender-affirming care. There was a significant effect of age
(P value = .003) on abbreviated EDE-Q scores.
Conclusions
There were no significant changes in disordered eating after initiating gender-affirming
medical care, possibly due to the limited study time frame of 12 months. Given the
high prevalence of disordered eating behaviors, clinicians should consider screening
all TGNB adolescents for disordered eating thoughts/behaviors throughout gender-affirming
care. Future longitudinal research should recruit larger samples with a diverse range
of gender identities and survey disordered eating thoughts/behaviors at least one
year after starting gender-affirming medications.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 29, 2022
Accepted:
December 16,
2022
Received:
May 3,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Journal Pre-ProofFootnotes
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Identification
Copyright
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