Anorexia among youngsters may be on the rise, new data suggests

Anorexia among children and young people could be on the rise, data suggests.

A new study found a doubling in the number of eight to 12-year-olds suffering from the condition, when compared to previous estimates.

Anorexia is a serious eating disorder and mental health condition.

It leads to people keeping their weight as low as possible by not eating, or exercising to excess.

Sufferers also often think they are fat when they are actually dangerously underweight.

For the new study, published in the journal BMJ Open, researchers, including from the Institute of Psychiatry in London and Imperial College London, examined data from the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Surveillance System.

This system details the number of youngsters with a new case of anorexia in contact with child and adolescent psychiatrists in the UK and Ireland.

The data showed there were 305 separate cases of anorexia among children and young people aged eight to 17 over an eight-month period in 2015.

Most of the sufferers were female (91%), were from England (70%) and were white (92%).

Overall, there were estimated to be 14 cases of anorexia per 100,000 children aged eight to 17 in the UK and Ireland.

Broken down by gender, this was 26 cases per 100,000 young women and two per 100,000 young men.

Incidence rates of anorexia increased steadily with age, the research found, peaking at age 15 (58 cases per 100,000) for girls and age 16 for young men (five cases per 100,000).