An Internet-based program may help prevent eating disorders in college-aged women who are most at risk, results of a study suggest.

“I suppose the most important message is that eating disorders can be prevented,” Dr. C. Barr Taylor, of Stanford University in California told Reuters Health.

“Internet based prevention interventions can be effective and reach large populations at relatively low cost,” he added.

Up to 4 percent of young women have anorexia nervosa, bulimia, or binge-eating disorders, and many more are known to be partially affected by these disorders, without displaying the full range of symptoms.

Women often start showing signs of eating disorders around 16 to 20 years of age, around the same age that many leave home for college.

In a short-term study involving a small number of women, an Internet-based program helped reduce young women’s concerns about their weight and body image.

To replicate the findings on a larger scale, Taylor and his colleagues recruited 480 college-age women from the San Diego and San Francisco Bay Area who were at risk for developing eating disorders, based on their scores on a scale that measures a person’s concerns about their weight and shape.

Women who participated in the Internet program, Student Bodies, were expected to read and complete weekly online assignments, participate in online discussion groups and self-monitoring, and/ or write entries in a journal for an eight-week period. The other women, who were randomly assigned to a comparison group, were offered the opportunity participate in the program at the end of the study.

Over three years, 43 women fully or partially satisfied the criteria for a diagnosis of bulimia or binge eating disorder, Taylor and his team report in this month’s Archives of General Psychiatry.

Participation in the Student Bodies program decreased the onset of eating disorders in two groups: those who had taken diet pills or laxatives, made themselves vomit or otherwise used compensatory behaviors at the start of the study and those who initially had a high body mass index.

Four percent of study participants in the San Francisco Bay Area with compensatory behaviors developed eating disorders one year after participating in the program, for example, in comparison to 16 percent of those who did not participate in the program.

Also, 14 percent of program participants developed an eating disorder at two years after the start of the program, in comparison to 30 percent of those in the comparison group.

None of the women with a high body mass index who participated in the Internet program developed an eating disorder. In contrast, nearly 5 percent of non-program participants with an initially high BMI developed an eating disorder by the first year and 12 percent developed an eating disorder by two years.

“In general, college-age women should adopt healthy eating and exercise habits as a way to control their weight,” said Taylor. “College-age women should not over emphasize the importance of weight and shape and who they are or use their weight and shape as a main source of self-esteem and self-worth,” he added.

In light of the findings, however, “college-age women interested in reducing weight and shape concerns should be offered appropriate interventions,” Taylor told Reuters Health, noting that “the interventions can be inexpensive and delivered on-line.”

SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry, August 2006.