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Posted on Sep 25, 2002, 6 a.m.
By Bill Freeman
There is new evidence that the psychiatric illness known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) runs in some families. Investigators from the departments of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, report this to be more often the case among people who start to experience symptoms at a very young age, and if the obsessive aspect of the disorder is more evident than the compulsive behavior.
There is new evidence that the psychiatric illness known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) runs in some families. Investigators from the departments of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, report this to be more often the case among people who start to experience symptoms at a very young age, and if the obsessive aspect of the disorder is more evident than the compulsive behavior. The team discovered that in families where someone already has OCD, another member of the family might start to show symptoms as early as age 8. The study involved interviews with 80 people with OCD and 343 of their relatives. The investigators found that people with a first-degree relative (parent, brother, sister) with OCD had nearly a 5 times greater risk for the mental disease than those who had no such family history. The authors also report that 2.7% of the people from the community had OCD, compared with almost 12% of those with a family history. About 10% of those with OCD who had a family history of the condition were mainly obsessive. This was true of only 2% in the 'control' group. While no genetic test is available for OCD, researchers hope that studies of this kind encourage the development of such a tool.
SOURCE/REFERENCE: Archives of General Psychiatry 2000;57:358-363.
