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Meta-Analysis
. 2022 Apr 21;14(9):1728.
doi: 10.3390/nu14091728.

Disgust and Self-Disgust in Eating Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Sevgi Bektas  1 , Johanna Louise Keeler  1 , Lisa M Anderson  2 , Hiba Mutwalli  1   3 , Hubertus Himmerich  1   4 , Janet Treasure  1   4
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Disgust and Self-Disgust in Eating Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Sevgi Bektas et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Disgust and self-disgust are aversive emotions which are often encountered in people with eating disorders. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of disgust and self-disgust in people with eating disorders using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The systematic review of the literature revealed 52 original research papers. There was substantial heterogeneity regarding the research question and outcomes. However, we found 5 articles on disgust elicited by food images, 10 studies on generic disgust sensitivity, and 4 studies on self-disgust, and we proceeded to a meta-analytic approach on these studies. We found that women with eating disorders have significantly higher momentary disgust feelings in response to food images (1.32; 95% CI 1.05, 1.59), higher generic disgust sensitivity (0.49; 95% CI 0.24, 0.71), and higher self-disgust (1.90; 95% CI 1.51, 2.29) compared with healthy controls. These findings indicate the potential clinical relevance of disgust and self-disgust in the treatment of eating disorders.

Keywords: disgust; eating disorders; self-disgust.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in design, analysis, or writing of this paper.

Figures

Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plots of Hedges’ g in generic disgust sensitivity between ED participants and HCs from n = 10 studies; CI: confidence interval. Refs. [27,30,32,33,34,35,37,38,54,76].
Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flow diagram illustrating the process of our review, screening, and article selection processes.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot of Hedges’ g in disgust elicited by food images between ED participants and HCs from n = 5 studies; CI: confidence interval. Refs. [45,46,49,50,52].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Forest plots of Hedges’ g in generic disgust sensitivity between AN participants and HCs from n = 8 studies; CI: confidence interval. Refs. [27,32,33,34,35,37,38,54].
Figure 5
Figure 5
Forest plots of Hedges’ g in generic disgust sensitivity between BN participants and HCs from n = 6 studies; CI: confidence interval. Refs. [27,30,32,33,34,79].
Figure 6
Figure 6
Forest plot of Hedges’ g in self-disgust between ED participants and HCs from n = 4 studies; CI: confidence interval. Refs. [33,38,43,44].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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