Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Evaluating hunger and hyperphagia is an important component of assessing children and young people with obesity. Identifying increased hunger levels will help clinicians and health professionals to taper management aspects including relevant genetic testing and providing tailored dietary and pharmacological management.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the baseline hunger levels in a group of UK adolescents with severe obesity.

Methods: Individuals who attended a paediatric tier 3 weight management clinic completed the three-factor eating questionnaire-R18 (TFEQr18) at baseline. This validated measure focuses on cognitive restraint, uncontrolled eating, and emotional eating.

Results: 39 patients completed the questionnaire, with an average age of 14.7 years (range 12-17). 51.3% (20/39) were female. The median body mass index (BMI) was 43.5 kg/m² (IQR 39.8-48.6). The transformed scores for each category were scored out of 100. The median score for uncontrolled eating was 44.4/100 (IQR 25.9-62.9) and for cognitive restraint was 40/100 (IQR 30.6-51.7). Emotional eating was the highest of the three categories with a median score of 55.6/100 (IQR 22.2-72.3). These results are higher than those published for individuals with a BMI within the normal range. When analysed using linear regression, with BMI as the independent variable, there was no association found between BMI and the three categories probably because all the BMI measurements are over 30 kg/m².

Discussion: The results of the baseline TFEQr18 questionnaires completed by adolescents with significant obesity have shown higher scores in the emotional eating and uncontrolled eating categories, with cognitive restraint scoring lowest. This information would be useful for the multidisciplinary team to provide targeted therapy and to monitor the response to the management.