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João B. Fonseca [1; 2] and Pedro Morgado [2; 3; 4]
Academic Editor: Toshiya Inada
1, Hospital da Senhora da Oliveira, Guimarães, Portugal, min-saude.pt
2, Hospital de Braga, Braga, Portugal, hospitaldebraga.pt
3, Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Health Sciences, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal, uminho.pt
4, ICVS/3B’s-PT Government Associate Laboratory, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal, uminho.pt
Received Apr 16, 2017; Revised Jul 3, 2017; Accepted Jul 24, 2017
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Coprophagia defines the behavior of consuming one’s own fecal waste, and it is usually viewed as a form of pica. Its occurrence has been described in individuals suffering from a wide range of mental disorders such as mental retardation, dementia, schizophrenia, cerebral tumors, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, alcoholism, and fetishism [1].
There are potential health risks related to coprophagia like salivary gland infection [2] and gastrointestinal disorders caused by parasite infestation [3]. In spite of not being regularly seen in humans, coprophagic behavior has been commonly described among veterinarians and it was suggested that digestive enzymatic deficiencies could provide an explanation for this condition [4].
On the other hand, entomophagia is considered the human consumption of insects for nutritional purposes, and the way these eating practices are accepted is largely variable depending upon the cultural context [5, 6]. The association between entomophagia and psychiatric disorders is not abundant, but at least one case report of this eating practice in a schizophrenic patient has been published [6].
In this report, we describe the case of a patient whose first manifestation of his underlying dementia was coprophagic and entomophagic behavior.
2. Case Report
A 59-year-old Caucasian, unmarried, unemployed, elementary school educated male was brought to our hospital for a psychiatric emergency observation. His caregivers indicated that the patient was presenting an abnormal behavior characterized by sexual disinhibition, physical aggression, disturbed eating habits alternating between hyperphagia and food refusal periods, and disconnected speech. The patient’s symptoms started approximately 3 years prior to the evaluation. At that time,...