Note: This CTSI-supported study was conducted in the Pediatric Clinical Research Center.
For adolescents hospitalized with anorexia nervosa, higher calorie diets produce twice the rate of weight gain compared to the lower calorie diets that currently are recommended, according to a study by researchers at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.
The findings will be published in the November issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health along with an accompanying editorial and two supporting studies, challenging the current conservative approach to feeding adolescents with anorexia nervosa during hospitalization for malnutrition. 
“These findings are crucial to develop evidence-based guidelines for the treatment of young people suffering from malnutrition related to anorexia nervosa,” said Andrea Garber, PhD, RD, associate professor of pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.
“This is the first study to follow patients in the hospital on a more aggressive feeding protocol, and it’s clear that we’re seeing better results as compared to the traditional approach,” said Garber, who led the research with colleagues in the UCSF Adolescent Eating Disorders Program.
The American Psychiatric Association, American Dietetic Association and others recommend starting with about 1,200 calories per day and advancing slowly by 200 calories every other day. This “start low and go slow” approach is intended to avoid refeeding syndrome – a potentially fatal condition resulting from rapid electrolyte shifts, a well-known risk when starting nutrition therapy in a starving patient.
In 2011, Garber and her colleagues published a study that was the first to show that adolescents on these lower-calorie diets had poor outcomes, including initial weight loss followed by poor weight gain and long hospital stays.
Read Full Article at UCSF.edu
Additional Coverage on SFGate.com