Anorexia nervosa is a severe mental disorder affecting most teenaged girls and young women.By using the Swedish Hospital Discharge Register, we have identified 6009 women with inpatient diagnosis of anorexia nervosa from 1973 to 2003.By cross linkage to other national registers we have obtained information on different outcomes, such as mortality, inpatient treatment for somatic and psychiatric conditions, parity and cancer diagnosis during follow-up.We have found a six-fold increased in mortality compared to female general population both in natural and unnatural causes of death.Childbearing was associated with an overall lower mortality, but parous women with anorexia nervosa still had increased mortality for unnatural causes of death, mostly suicide.We have also studied women with anorexia with regard to the risk for developing cancer and we have found a decreased risk for breast cancer, mainly among those who had their first hospitalization for anorexia before the age of 25.On the contrary, an increased cancer risk was seen for lung cancer.Women with AN had a twice as high mortality from cancer in general, and more specifically from melanoma, cancers of genital organs and cancers of ill-defined, secondary and unspecified sites.These findings are discussed from a both theoretical and clinical perspective.