Regional cerebral blood flow abnormalities in early-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder: an exploratory SPECT study.

OBJECTIVE: Recent epidemiological and clinical data suggest that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may be subtyped according the age of onset of obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) technique was used to investigate whether the pathophysiology of OCD differs between early- and late-onset OCD subjects. METHOD: Resting rCBF was measured in 13 early-onset (<10 years) and 13 late-onset (>12 years) adult OCD subjects and in 22 healthy controls. Voxel-based rCBF comparisons were performed with statistical parametric mapping. RESULTS: Early-onset OCD cases showed decreased rCBF in the right thalamus, left anterior cingulate cortex, and bilateral inferior prefrontal cortex relative to late-onset subjects (p < .0005, uncorrected for multiple comparisons). Relative to controls, early-onset cases had decreased left anterior cingulate and right orbitofrontal rCBF, and increased rCBF in the right cerebellum, whereas late-onset subjects showed reduced right orbitofrontal rCBF and increased rCBF in the left precuneus. In early-onset subjects only, severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms correlated positively with left orbitofrontal rCBF. CONCLUSIONS: rCBF differences in frontal-subcortical circuits between early-onset and late-onset OCD subjects were found, both in location and direction of changes. These results provide preliminary evidence that brain mechanisms in OCD may differ depending on the age at which symptoms are first expressed.

A voxel-based investigation of regional cerebral blood flow abnormalities in obsessive-compulsive disorder using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT).

Several functional imaging studies have reported abnormalities of the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, striatum and thalamus in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). These studies have often been limited by small patient samples and image analysis methods that rely on region-of-interest (ROI) approaches. We have assessed resting regional cerebral blood flow with 99mTc-ECD SPECT in 26 unmedicated OCD patients and 22 healthy control subjects using the voxel-based Statistical Parametric Mapping method for data analysis. We found a significantly reduced ECD uptake in OCD patients relative to the control subjects in the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and in the left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (P<0.001 two-tailed, uncorrected for multiple comparisons). There were significant positive correlations in the OCD group between the ECD uptake in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex and ratings for obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS), and between the ECD uptake in the right medial orbitofrontal cortex and the ratings for both OCS and depressive symptoms. There were also unpredicted significant ECD uptake increases in the cerebellum in OCD patients, as well as a negative correlation between posterior cingulate ECD uptake and OCS severity (P<0.05, corrected for multiple testing). These results implicate specific subregions of the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices in the pathophysiology of OCD, as well as suggesting the involvement of other areas not usually included in ROI-based imaging studies. With the incorporation of voxel-based methods and the use of large patient samples, rCBF-SPECT studies may continue to provide valuable information about the functional anatomy of OCD.