Obsessive Compulsive Disorder News and Research

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Anxiety disorders are serious medical illnesses that affect approximately 20 million adults in the United States. These disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Obsessive-compulsive disorder affects approximately 3.3 million adults in the United States, causing patients to experience obsessive thoughts and perform repetitive rituals (e.g. checking, hoarding, hand washing) that interfere with normal life. The obsessive thoughts and compulsions are often irrational and cause significant stress and anxiety, leading to isolation of the individual from work or society, or impaired productivity. Individuals with OCD often recognize their behaviors as excessive or unreasonable. OCD is a chronic condition that usually begins in adolescence or early adulthood. Although patients can be treated with cognitive behavioral therapy and conventional antidepressant or antianxiety drugs, approximately 20% of patients achieve full remission. Secretin may provide an alternative for patients who are refractory to other drug therapies.

Brain networks at rest appear to be in state of potentiation for action, study suggests

Just as a sprinter's body and muscles are ready for action as they wait for the starting gun to fire, brain networks at rest appear to be waiting in a state of potentiation to execute even the simplest of behaviors.

10 Mar 2017

Study shows how variations in receptor genes may lead to obsessive-compulsive disorder traits

A new Northwestern Medicine study found evidence suggesting how neural dysfunction in a certain region of the brain can lead to obsessive and repetitive behaviors much like obsessive-compulsive disorder.

22 Feb 2017

Rutgers-Princeton Center aims to improve diagnosis of psychiatric diseases using computational models

A new center is bringing together researchers from Princeton and Rutgers universities to apply computational modeling to the understanding of psychiatric diseases.

15 Feb 2017

Deep brain stimulation can reduce heroin relapse in rat models of addiction, TSRI study shows

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have found that deep brain stimulation (DBS) can greatly reduce the compulsion to use heroin in standard rat models of addiction.

2 Feb 2017

Neuroimaging markers may help predict psychotherapy response in patients with depression, anxiety

Brain imaging scans may one day provide useful information on the response to psychotherapy in patients with depression or anxiety, according to a review of current research in the November/December issue of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, published by Wolters Kluwer.

10 Nov 2016

High resting heart rate and blood pressure predict increased risk for later mental health disorders

A high resting heart rate and blood pressure in youth predict an increased susceptibility for anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder later in life, reveals an extensive study conducted by the University of Helsinki and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

26 Oct 2016

UAB investigators receive BRAIN Initiative award to study new DBS technology for Parkinson's disease

The University of Alabama at Birmingham has received a BRAIN Initiative grant of $7.3 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health to study new technology that could improve outcomes from deep brain stimulation, an increasingly important treatment for Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders.

18 Oct 2016

Researchers develop mouse model to investigate behavioral effects of eating disorder gene

Giving mice a gene mutation linked to eating disorders in people causes feeding and behavior abnormalities similar to symptoms often seen in patients with eating disorders. Only female mice are affected by the gene mutation, and some of the abnormalities in the female mice depend on whether they are housed alone or together with other mice.

13 Oct 2016

New program at Seattle Children's Hospital helps kids find freedom from OCD

Since Eva Tomassini was 4 years old, she remembers her life being controlled by rules. Not from her parents, or school, but rules she created in her head, like having to arrange things in a certain way or run away in order to prevent terrible things from happening.

7 Oct 2016

Scientists reveal molecular elements that bridge anxiety and metabolism

Metabolic and anxiety-related disorders both pose a significant healthcare burden, and are in the spotlight of contemporary research and therapeutic efforts. Although intuitively we assume that these two phenomena overlap, the link has not been proven scientifically.

5 Oct 2016

Researchers find common brain abnormalities shared across multiple emotional disorders

Researchers have long known that emotional disorders have a lot in common. Many often occur together, like depression and social anxiety disorder. Treatments also tend to work across multiple disorders, suggesting shared underlying elements.

28 Sep 2016

Researchers identify process in the brains of mice that may explain repetitive actions in Rett patients

Three-year-old Naomi slaps her forehead a few times, bites her fingers and toddles across the doctor's office in her white and pink pajamas before turning her head into a door with a dull thud.

27 Sep 2016

Maternal smoking linked to increased risk for Tourette syndrome and tic disorders

A study published in the September 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found an association between maternal smoking during pregnancy and an increased risk for Tourette syndrome and other chronic tic disorders.

7 Sep 2016

Priory Group opens Wellbeing Centre in Greater Manchester to help young people tackle stress

The Priory Group, the leading provider of mental healthcare in the UK, most commonly known for treating celebrities with addictions, has opened its first Wellbeing Centre in Cheadle, Great Manchester.

3 Aug 2016

Scientists detect common brain impairments in children with ASD, ADHD and OCD

A team of Toronto scientists has found similarities in brain impairments in children with autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

27 Jul 2016

Risk of suicide among OCD patients much higher than previously thought

Patients with OCD are 10 times more likely to commit suicide, contrary to what was previously thought. In a new study from Karolinska Institutet published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, is also shown that the main predictor of suicide in OCD patients is a previous suicide attempt, which offers opportunities for prevention.

19 Jul 2016

Duke University study provides new mechanistic understanding of OCD

A single chemical receptor in the brain is responsible for a range of symptoms in mice that are reminiscent of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), according to a Duke University study that appears online in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

17 Jul 2016

Lower attention ability in early adolescence linked to increased genetic risk for four different anxiety symptoms

University of Texas at Arlington researchers have found that low attention control in early adolescence is related to a genetic risk factor for four different anxiety disorders. Young teens who suffer from anxiety are also more vulnerable to additional problems like depression, drug dependence, suicidal behavior and educational underachievement.

21 Jun 2016

Study shows women, young individuals under age 35 more likely to experience anxiety

Women are almost twice as likely to experience anxiety as men, according to a review of existing scientific literature, led by the University of Cambridge. The study also found that people from Western Europe and North America are more likely to suffer from anxiety than people from other cultures.

6 Jun 2016

Scientists use optogenetics technique to increase memory in mice brain

Raül Andero Galí, one of the heads of the "Neurobiology of Stress and Addiction" research group at the Institut de Neurociències of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and researcher at Harvard University, published an article in which, for the first time in Spain, optogenetics was used to increase memory.

2 Jun 2016