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Related Concept Videos

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder01:28

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health condition characterized by recurrent obsessions, compulsions, or both, which consume significant time and interfere with daily functioning. Obsessions involve persistent, intrusive, and unwanted thoughts, images, or urges that evoke anxiety. Common examples include irrational fears of contamination or harm. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or mental acts performed to reduce the anxiety caused by obsessions. For instance, individuals...
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Signal Attenuation as a Rat Model of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
09:29

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Published on: January 9, 2015

Evidence for a heritable unidimensional symptom factor underlying obsessionality.

Carol A Mathews1, Tiffany Greenwood, Jennifer Wessel

  • 1Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143-0984, USA. cmathews@lppi.ucsf.edu

American Journal of Medical Genetics. Part B, Neuropsychiatric Genetics : the Official Publication of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics
|January 1, 2008
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

A core group of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) appears to be unidimensional and heritable, explaining most symptom variations. This finding suggests a fundamental genetic component underlying obsessionality across different populations.

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Area of Science:

  • Psychiatry
  • Behavioral Genetics
  • Clinical Psychology

Background:

  • Obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) are often categorized into distinct factors, but their utility in genetic studies is debated due to inconsistent heritability findings.
  • The potential influence of a
  • core
  • group of OCS that transcends traditional symptom subgroups has received less research attention.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the existence of a core group of OCS.
  • To compare the heritability of this core construct against traditionally derived symptom factors.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized the Leyton Obsessional Inventory to assess OCS properties and heritability.
  • Examined three distinct samples: college students, medical students, and families with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Main Results:

  • A core group of OCS was identified across all samples, representing a unique construct that explained over 90% of the variance in traditional symptom factors.
  • This core construct showed a high correlation with OCD in familial samples, with heritability estimates of 0.19 (without OCD covariate) and 0.49 (with OCD covariate).
  • The four traditionally derived symptom factors demonstrated no significant heritability.

Conclusions:

  • Obsessionality appears to possess an underlying, heritable unidimensional component.
  • This core component significantly contributes to the variation observed in traditional OCS factors and is not specific to any subgroup.