More than a million Australians live with an eating disorder, with the impact of such disorders worsening during the Covid-19 pandemic, yet treatment options have remained stagnant for more than six decades.

“We have a condition that has a high mortality and a very high morbidity but the only treatments available are ‘talking therapies’ that haven’t provided patients with the treatment they deserve,” said Monash University’s HER Centre Australia Director Professor Jayashri Kulkarni AM.

“Over the past 60 years there has not been any real change in how treatments for eating disorders, which cover a spectrum ranging from various disordered patterns of eating to anorexia nervosa, have been delivered,” she said.

But things may be about to change. A revolutionary Monash University-led eating disorder research program will target biological causes and possible new treatments including novel drugs, brain stimulation and hormones.

The Transformative Hub for Research in Eating Disorders (THRED) will be coordinated through Monash University’s HER Centre Australia, which was launched in 2022 to consolidate and expand research into and treatment of women’s mental illness.

Researchers from the HER Centre and the Department of Neuroscience in Monash’s Central Clinical School will work collaboratively on the disorders, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder.

The THRED program will have three key pillars: delivering new, effective treatments, enhancing current treatments and uncovering biological causes.

With an ambitious goal of revolutionising eating disorder management, THRED will conduct clinical trials of new treatment approaches for serious eating disorders, and hopefully deliver more effective options.

Expected to start in the second half of 2023, the clinical trials will assess brain stimulation, hormonal manipulation and novel drug therapies.

The project will also focus on developing new treatments as ideas are generated based on their own and other research findings from Australia and around the world.

Professor Kulkarni said eating disorders could develop due to biological changes related to genes, RNA, and proteins, yet very little had been invested in developing treatments that targeted brain biology and/or biological factors. She said a
holistic approach was needed.

“For too long, eating disorders have been surrounded by ignorance about their cause and stigma that often assigns blame to the person with the ED ‘if only she would eat … the problem would go away’,” she said.

“It’s not that simple. These are complex conditions that require multi-faceted solutions. Psychotherapy is important but does not encompass the big picture, or the possibility of biological causes.

Eventually, THRED hopes to move into a second phase of research investigating biomarkers that could help define ED subtypes and pave the way for new treatments.