"The results of this study confirm our hypothesis that women with eating disorders show high levels of obsessive-compulsive personality traits in childhood, relative to healthy comparison subjects. There was a strong increasing relationship between the number of reported childhood traits and the odds of developing an eating disorder, with each extra reported trait increasing the odds of developing an eating disorder nearly sevenfold. We also confirmed our subsidiary hypothesis of developmental continuity in that the presence of childhood perfectionism and rigidity identified a subgroup of people with eating disorders with a significantly higher prevalence of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder later in life."