Introduction:

The term "diabulimia" results from the combination of two words: diabetes mellitus and bulimia. One of the characteristics of the patients affected is the deliberate restriction of insulin with the aim of controlling body weight.

Objective:

To describe the definition and current consensus on the term diabulimia.

Methods:

It was carried out a search of important literature on the subject. There were used as search engines of scientific information Pubmed and Google Scholar. As eligibility criteria, there were assessed review articles, research and web pages that, in general, were less than 10 years of been published, in Spanish, Portuguese and English languages, which would make specific reference to the studied topic, and that would address the issue through any research methodology (quantitative, qualitative, operations research, others). There were excluded the articles that did not comply with these conditions. This allowed the study of 33 articles, of which 20 are referenced in this article.

Conclusions:

The description of the term diabulimia generates significant challenges. There are different definitions, which tends to confuse patients and even health professionals. At present, it has not been possible to achieve a consensus on this definition that is why it will continue to be a slang term and will not be officially recognized as a disease. It is important to admit the relevance of diabulimia and to be able to identify indicators of its presence, since this condition exposes patients with diabetes mellitus to deleterious effects on their health and quality of life.

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