BRIEF REPORT

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a disease affecting mainly young women. It involves a pathological desire to be thin and has a complex etiology. Treatments, which have varying degrees of success, focus on medication or supervised counseling, sometimes in a hospital setting. AN has several possible co-morbidities, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and anxiety. In this article, it is hypothesized that since AN has characteristics in common with those of addiction, it could possibly be treated with supplements, such as N-acetylcysteine (NAC), which act to restore glutamate homeostasis in the nucleus accumbens and have been successfully employed in the treatment of substance abuse and various addictive behaviors.

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Keywords: Anorexia nervosa, eating disorder, behavioral addiction, eating disorder treatment, food behavior, glutamate, N-acetylcysteine, pharmacological therapy,  psychostimulants

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Conflict of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest

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Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Neural Press.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the CC BY 4.0 license.

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Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors, and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.