[Are the neuropsychological alterations in eating disorders endophenotypes of the disease? Review and state of the art].

INTRODUCTION. Recent studies have shown that alterations to the executive cognitive functions may be endophenotypes of eating disorders. AIM. To perform a critical review of the literature on neuropsychological alterations in patients with eating disorders and their first-degree relatives. DEVELOPMENT. We review the papers written in English and in Spanish indexed in Medline and PsycINFO over the last 10 years. We included abstracts of papers that have still not been published and search terms were crossed. Excluding some isolated clinical cases, we obtained 41 studies on patients with anorexia nervosa (n = 17), bulimia nervosa (n = 5), both (n = 13) or a non-specific eating disorder (n = 6). CONCLUSIONS. The studies reviewed display important limitations due to their heterogeneous methodology and small samples, which give rise to contradictory results. Most of them were conducted on anorexia nervosa. Cognitive rigidity seems to be more frequent in patients with anorexia and their relatives, and alterations in decision-making or central coherence is more often found in bulimia nervosa. There is evidence suggesting that the neuropsychological alterations found in eating disorders are endophenotypes of the disease.