Present study used a ML approach and data from individuals accessing the care for obesity and no diabetes to identify individual-level metabolic features that could be associated with the diagnosis of BED. It further aimed to investigate the predictive diagnostic accuracy of a pure metabolic based ML approach in screening BED among seekers care for obesity.
Results suggest that sex, BMI, and glucose metabolism-related variables such as glucose levels at specific times of the OGTT, skewness of the glucose load, insulin sensitivity indexes, and hypoglycemia events could be crucial when it comes to identifying those individuals suffering from BED among patients with obesity.
Cross-sectional studies in population with no diabetes have demonstrated that binge-eating associates with fasting hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, and higher frequency of pre-diabetes phenotypes (e.g., impaired glucose tolerance)(23, 42–44). Hypoglycemia events occurring with neurogenic or neuroglycopenic symptoms and typically reverting with carbohydrates intake (i.e., reactive hypoglycemia)(45) have been recently studied and preliminarily associated to binge-eating during an extended laboratory stimulation, suggesting that individuals suffering from BED, obesity, but no diabetes would suffer from more frequent and more severe hypoglycemia events with respect to the counterpart with no ED (23). More consistently, longitudinal studies have showed that binge-eating contributes to higher odds of metabolic syndrome components in the long-term beyond the risk attributable to obesity alone (46, 47).
Present results confirm, but more importantly, leverage the relevance of these metabolic correlates in their potentiality to specifically cluster BED vs non-BED in non-psychiatric settings. Overall, this study suggests that modeling OGTT-related metabolic features together with demographics and anthropometrics could assist the diagnostic process, potentially identifying BED in five to seven out of ten of cases, depending on data collection. Specifically, the Models performed similarly in classifying cases not at risk (67%), but the 5 hours long OGTT based Model outperformed in terms of sensitivity (75%), accuracy (71%), and overall ability to predict class membership (0.67 vs 0.47). The relative weight of hypoglycemia in the model, together with the evidence that individuals with BED would experience more hypoglycemia events during the laboratory test at the latest stages of the glucose load (4th -5th hour), could have contributed to the better performance of Model 2 over Model 1. The diagnostic accuracy of the models is surprisingly encouraging considering the diagnostic accuracy the specifically tailored psychometric instruments exhibit. A recent systematic review compared the performances of the most widely used screening questionnaires in detecting BED in overweight or obesity and found high variability across studies (48). Only moderate accuracy was found for the Eating Disorders Questionnaire (EDE-Q) (sensibility: 0.40–0.87; specificity: 0.62-1), and the Binge Eating Scale (BES) (sensibility: 0.51–0.98; specificity: 0.48–0.76), still considered the most widely used psychometrics tools in the field.
Further, the ML algorithms hereby used to detect BED as a psychiatric disorder were exclusively fed with glycemic/insulinemic and other non-psychological features. Authors may, accordingly, speculate that adding psychometric tools specifically designed for BED and tailored to overweight and obesity (e.g., the Eating Behaviors Assessment for Obesity,(49)) to the training could potentially booster the diagnostic accuracy of the present model.
Other studies have previously tested ML techniques to evaluate the risk, assist the investigation, or predict the outcome of BED (26, 29, 31, 50). Eric Stice and Christopher D. Desjardins in 2018 used a multiple approach-based classification tree analysis to investigate the interactions of risk factors in the prediction of the onset of EDs in a large dataset of individuals at high risk. The onset of BED was accurately predicted in 64% of cases by a complex four-way interaction between body dissatisfaction, overeating, dieting, and thin-ideal internalization (29). In the investigation of Linardon and colleagues, a ML-based decision tree classification analysis captured 70% of binge-eaters by examining eating behaviors and cognitions. The two-way interaction of low intuitive eating and high dichotomous thinking resulted largely associated with being classified with recurrent binge eating (84% incidence)(26). Lastly, Forrest L.N. tested two ML approaches to evaluate treatment outcomes in a sample of individuals suffering from BED randomized to six months behavioural or stepped-care treatments. Authors concluded for a slight advantage of the ML over the traditional models, claiming for further empirical confirmation in the EDs literature (31).
Still recognizing the relevance of ML-based investigations based on psychological measures, they require specific training and specialized settings for the analysis.
BED goes undiagnosed for many years and suffers from the greatest delay to proper treatments of all EDs (17). This is partly due to either patient or clinician-related factors (18, 21), but surely contributes to the great medical burden and overall disability BED associates with. Further, treatment outcomes often deviate from the expectations (51, 52).
The highest prevalence of BED is found in clinical samples attending weight loss programs or bariatric surgery (53, 54). Training ML algorithms with objective measures embedded within the medical screening individuals suffering from BED could undergo in these settings, could enable a prompt detection in non-specialized settings, would generate more targeted interventions and anticipate clinical progression.
To our knowledge, no similar evidence exists so far. The current study is the first that has attempted training ML to diagnose BED basing on objective measures (OGTT-derived features), pioneering the field of metabolic based AI applied to BED. With respect to other studies that used self-report binge episodes to corroborate the diagnosis (26), BED was diagnosed clinically, thereby enhancing the accuracy of the results. Further analyses on larger datasets and considering other valuable biomarkers could enhance modeling performances and translate to clinical practice its use to inform clinical decisions.
Within these strengths, some limitations should be addressed. Embedded within the methodology used, no information can be extracted about the nature of associations between the relevant features and BED class (e.g., higher Hb1Ac in BED vs non-BED). Further, authors acknowledge that the cross-sectional design prevent to infer any causal or temporal association between variables. Although distinct methods were applied to avoid overfitting (i.e., scaling, splitting, features selection with the RFE), an inflation in model accuracy due to the sample size cannot be excluded. The sample was all White, and not gender balanced. Accordingly, results may not be generalizable to samples with other characteristics.
Finally, authors selected for the analysis the most informative metabolic features so far associated with BED and known to constitute early markers of late metabolic disruption (e.g., diabetes, metabolic syndrome); still, we recognize that the use of a different set of features or more advanced statistical methodology could produce distinct and perhaps more significant results.