NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many teenagers are dealing with weight issues, from obesity to eating disorder symptoms, and these problems seem to have some causes in common, new research suggests.

In a five-year study of more than 2,500 teenagers, researchers found that 44 percent of girls and 29 percent of boys were overweight, habitual binge-eaters or had taken unhealthy measures to lose weight — such as abusing laxatives, using diet pills or vomiting.

In many cases, these problems overlapped. Among overweight girls, 40 percent reported binge-eating, extreme dieting or both, the study authors report in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"We usually look for these behaviors in very thin girls, but here we see a very high prevalence in overweight girls," lead study author Dr. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, said in a statement.