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Chulalongkorn Medical Journal

Abstract

Background: Food addiction (FA) is referred to when the need to eat becomes compulsive or uncontrollable.It may result in higher risk of various medical conditions and thus being appropriate target for designing effectivetherapeutic approaches for such conditions. Information about FA in Thai population is however limited nowadays.Objective: This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and related factors of FA among nurses of a universityhospital in Bangkok.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 773 nurses of a university hospital in Bangkok,Thailand between April 2018 and April 2019. FA was assessed by the Thai version of the Modified Yale FoodAddiction Scale Version 2.0 (mYFAS 2.0). Associations of personal demographics and various potential riskfactors with FA were examined by logistic regression analyses and the odds ratio (OR) as measures of association.Results: The prevalence (95% confidence interval or CI) of FA was 9.7% (7.6  11.8). The proportions of mild,moderate and severe FA of 48.0%, 26.7% and 25.3%, respectively. Factors which were significantly and independentlyassociated with FA included the presence of medical condition (OR = 2.55; 95%CI = 1.16  5.62), doing part-time job(OR = 3.86; 95%CI = 1.68  8.88), low decision latitude on working (OR =2.49; 95%CI = 1.37  4.52), and highernumber of buffet per month (OR = 2.27, 2.85, and 2.51 respectively for having 1 - 2, 3 - 4, and more than 4 buffetsper month). In addition, having couple and colleague as the influencer of eating habit (OR = 4.87and 2.24 respectively) and the presence of chronic pain and depress as the stress symptoms (OR = 2.96;95%CI = 1.10  7.92) also associated with FA.Conclusions: FA prevalence among nurses in this university hospital was quite high. A number of factorsrelated to personal health, work, and eating were significantly associated with FA. Additional longitudinalstudies are imperative before being firmly conclude about the causality of such associations.

DOI

10.58837/CHULA.CMJ.64.4.10

First Page

425

Last Page

430

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