Adults

Within adult population, eight studies assessing disordered eating prevalence among individuals with ADHD symptomatology.

Two of these studies, with no control group, found a prevalence of 8.6% for BN [111], and 1.1% and 13% for any ED in ADHD patient men and women respectively [29]. Four studies with a general non-clinical population examined ED prevalence; ADHD-ED association odds ratio ranged from 1.32 (95% CI: 0.82–2.13) to 28.24 (95% CI: 6.33–126.01) [13,107–109]. These associations were particularly strong for BN (up to OR = 28.24, 95% CI: 6.33–126.01) [107,109]. Three of these studies found that ADHD symptoms were associated with an increased risk of ED. However, the odds ratio was significant after adjusting for age, sex and race, but not after adjusting for age, sex, race and psychiatric comorbidities, especially for BED (details in Table 2) [108,109]. Among psychiatric outpatients, Gorlin and colleagues (2016) [110] found higher ED prevalence for individuals diagnosed with ADHD (9.3% vs. 3.8%, *p* < 0.01), especially for the inattentive subtype (inattentive subtype: 10.3% individuals with an ED; OR = 3.01, 95% CI: 1.30–6.34; combined subtype: 8.1%, OR = 2.17, 95% CI: 0.90–4.68).

All publications assessing addictive-like eating symptoms in individuals with ADHD symptoms (*n* = 4) reported that ADHD was associated with a higher risk of addictive-like eating symptomatology: food addiction, binge eating, uncontrolled eating, significant distress in relation to food, and made him/herself be sick because he/she felt uncomfortably full [11,13,107,108] (details in Table 2). The FA prevalence rate was higher in patients with ADHD symptoms or diagnosis. In a study conducted in a non-clinical student population, FA prevalence was observed in 14.1% of the sample with ADHD symptoms compared to only 4% of those without ADHD symptoms (OR = 2.27, 95% CI: 1.05–4.88) [13]. In a sample of patients with severe obesity, FA prevalence was higher in those with than without ADHD diagnosis (28.6% vs. 9.1%; OR = 4.00, 95% CI: 1.29–12.40) [11]. Moreover, in a sample of adults with severe obesity, FA was associated with a retrospective assessment of childhood ADHD (24.3% vs. 8.8% without childhood ADHD symptoms, OR: 3.32, 95% CI: 1.08–10.23, *p* = 0.034) [11].
