The relationship of autistic traits to taste and olfactory processing in anorexia nervosa.

The study compared people with anorexia nervosa with healthy controls, so it cannot show that a treatment changes taste or smell. It measured self-rated autistic traits with the Autism Quotient rather than comparing people with anorexia nervosa who have autism with people who do not have autism. The anorexia nervosa sample was mixed in illness duration, BMI, treatment status, eating disorder subtype and medication use, and the study was not large enough to control for all of these differences. The researchers used a stricter significance value of p = 0.005 because they tested many outcomes, so some unadjusted differences were not counted as significant. The study did not include IQ, which may affect smell sensitivity, and it did not control for age beyond excluding people over 55. The sample was predominantly female adults, so results may not apply to children, men, or people with different sensory presentations. The paper reports no significant objective differences, but it cannot prove the absence of differences without a Bayesian analysis.

The study was funded by the MRC and MRF Fund, the Medical Research Council UK, and the Health Foundation. No other author conflicts are reported in the supplied text.

Do not read the null objective taste and smell results as proof that sensory differences are absent in anorexia nervosa. The study did not include a separate autism comparison group, and people with anorexia nervosa did report significantly greater touch sensitivity on a self-rated questionnaire.