Prevalence of risk behaviors for eating disorders in athletes: a systematic review

Introduction: The competitive sports environment requires a lot of discipline and requires ruled routines to achieve better results, which can generate demands and stress. It is believed that this environment may favor the development of eating disorders (ED's). The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of risk behaviors for eating disorders (RBED's) in athletes. Materials and Methods: Systematic review carried out in the PubMed, Lillacs and SciELO databases, for articles published in the last five years, in Portuguese and English. For search, the terms used were "Anorexia", "Athletes", "Bulimia", "Exercise", "Feeding and Eating Disorders" and "Sports". Results: A total of 2101 studies were found and, after applying the eligibility criteria, 30 studies were included. A total of 7820 people were included. In this review, 80% of the studies identified the presence of RBED's. Regarding body image, dissatisfaction ranged from 3.8% to 87%. It was found that the most studied disorder was bulimia, followed by anorexia, binge eating disorder and orthorexia. The Eating Attitudes Test -26 was the most used questionnaire (40%). The most studied sports were running (25%), football (20.8%), ballet (16.7%) and bodybuilding (12.5%). The prevalence of RBED's in women was 23.5%, and 18.7% in men. The average age of study participants (n=18) was 25.2 years. Conclusion: Athletes appear to be vulnerable to the development of EDs, which can affect any sport, gender and age. The EAT -26 was the most used instrument for the identification of RBED's. Research on this topic helps to clarify this problem, to prevent risks and treat them early.