Background. Treatments of eating disorders result too often in partial psychological and
physical remission, chronic course, dropout, relapse and death, with no fully known
explanations for this failure. In order to clarify this problem, we conducted a three
branches study to identify the biochemical background of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy
(CBT), individual psychology brief psychotherapy (IBPP), and psychotherapy-pharmacotherapy
with CBT+olanzapine in anorexics (AN) and bulimics (BN) by measuring the levels of plasma
homovanillic acid (HVA) for dopamine secretion, plasma 3-methoxy-4-hydroxy-phenylglycol
(MHPG) for noradrenalin secretion, and platelet [3 Hydrogen]-Paroxetine-binding Bmax and Kd
for serotonin transporter function. The data were then compared with psychopathological and
physical alterations. Methods. Branch 1 investigated the effects of 4 months of CBT on plasma
HVA, MHPG and [3 Hydrogen]-Par-binding in 14 AN-restricted, 14 AN-bingeing/purging, and 22 BN
inpatients. Branch 2 investigated the effects of 4 months of IBPP on plasma HVA in 15 AN and
17 BN outpatients. Branch 3 investigated the effect of 3 months of CBT+olanzapine (5 mg/day)
in 30 AN outpatients. The data are analyzed using one-way ANOVA for repeated measures for the
changes between basal and post-treatment biological and psychological parameters, two-way
ANOVA for repeated measures for the differences in the psychobiological data in the 3 groups,
Spearman's test for the correlations between basal and final changes in the psychological and
biological scores.