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Introduction: The prevalence of eating disorders varies depending on the studied group, being important the one found on students of biomedical careers.
Objective: To determine the relation between the presence of the symptoms of eating disorders (anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa) and the studied factors, in undergraduates of first year of biomedical careers from a private university of Arequipa.
Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study was performed. We used The Eating Disorder Inventory 2 and The Cisneros Student Questionnaire on School Bullying. Other variables were professional career, type of school, extracurricular activities, religion, academic performance in high school, number of lovers, weekly hours watching television and daily hours employed in a social network. We evaluated 226 subjects.
Results: The multiple linear regression analysis found that symptoms of eating disorders are associated with studying Obstetrics, having performed extracurricular academic activities in the last year, the number of daily hours spent in a social network and bullying.
Discussion: Obstetrics students would be at risk because of female predominance (predisposing factor) and maybe the body dissatisfaction. The use of social networks (by generating social pressure or discrimination) and bullying (by causing body dissatisfaction) would be precipitant factors. The extracurricular academic activities would act as risk factor or as consequence of perfectionism.
Conclusion: In students of biomedical careers, symptoms of eating disorders were associated with studying Obstetrics (because of female predominance), extracurricular academic activities (by associated stress), use of social networks and bullying (by social pressure and body dissatisfaction).
