[Methylphenidate, tics and compulsions]. / Méthylphénidate, tics et compulsions.

Obsessive compulsive (OC) symptoms following methylphenidate (MPH) administration are seldom reported and usually not even mentioned among its adverse effects. We report here a case of MPH-induced OC symptoms which began ten months after the treatment was initiated and that were exacerbated 14 months later. This delay and the symptoms fluctuations might lead out of the right diagnostic though tic occurrence could then correct. Cross-sensitization between stress and psychostimulants might as well explain the long delayed onset of obsessive compulsive symptoms as their fluctuation both along time and contexts.

[A peripheral biological marker of organicity. Chromosome mosaic anomalies in general psychiatry]. / Un marqueur biologique périphérique d'organicité. Les anomalies chromosomiales en mosaïques en psychiatrie générale.

During February 1979 to December 1982 we studied the karyotype of 706 psychiatric adult patients without making a clinical selection. We found a chromosomial mosaïc aberration in 37 cases, concerning one leukocyte mitosis for ten studied cells : so a proportion of 5.2% cases. There do not exist statistics concerning the general population's mosaïc aberrations but in the same population the proportion of the homogeneous aberrations is near 0.5%, so 10 times lower than the proportion that we observed. The largest number of aberrations found concern the gonosomes, essentially some monosomics 45,XO or some trisomics 47,3X, among women who present a maniac depressive psychosis or another type of depression.