Smaller Pituitary Volumes in Patients with Delusional Disorder.

INTRODUCTION: Delusional disorder shares some clinical characteristics of OCD and hypochondriasis. Delusions compared to obsessions in the OCD and compared to bodily preoccupations in the hypochondriasis are more established beliefs. AIM: To measure pituitary volumes in patients with delusional disorder and hypothesized that volumes would be reduced in those patients by a mechanism that we could not account for before for patients with OCD and hypochondriasis. METHODS: Eighteen patients with delusional disorder and healthy controls were included into the study. Pituitary gland volumes were measured. RESULTS: When using independent t test, the mean total pituitary volume was 777.22±241.28 mm3 in healthy controls, while it was 532.11±125.65 mm3 in patients with delusional disorder. The differences in regard to pituitary gland volumes between patients with delusional disorder and healthy control subjects were statistically meaningful (p<0.01), as supported by ANCOVA, with the covariates of age, gender and total brain volumes as covariates. CONCLUSION: We determined that patients with delusional disorder had smaller pituitary volumes compared to those of healthy control subjects.

Volumetric MRI study of orbito-frontal cortex and thalamus in obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

OBJECTIVES: Obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is currently thought to bear a close relationship with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and other compulsive disorders such as eating disorder and autistic spectrum disorder, as well as with the personality disorders, focusing on some important dimensions like phenomenology, heritability, environmental risk factors, comorbidity, course of illness, neurocognitive endophenotypes, and treatment response. In the present study, when we have taken into consideration the knowledge aforementioned, we aimed to examine OFC and thalamus volumes in patients with OCPD. METHODS: We comparatively measured orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) and thalamus volumes of patients with OCPD and healthy control subjects. RESULTS: Patients with OCPD had considerably smaller left and right OFC volumes compared to those of healthy control subjects. We also found that thalamus volumes of patients were statistically significantly greater than those of healthy comparisons for both sides of region of interest. CONCLUSIONS: We consider that volumetric alterations determined in the present study may be involved in the pathophysiology of the OCPD, considering that OCPD might be related to OCD spectrum disorders neuroanatomically.

Hippocampus and amygdalar volumes in patients with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

OBJECTIVES: Moving from the point that there might be an association between the neuroanatomy of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, we decided to examine the volumes of hippocampus and amygdala of patients with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, which was previously evaluated in OCD patients by us. METHODS: Volumes of the hippocampus, and amygdala were measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and healthy control subjects. Manual tracing was used. RESULTS: We detected that the mean left and right sides of hippocampus and amygdala volumes of the patients with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder were smaller than those of the healthy controls. CONCLUSION: Consequently, our present results suggest that hippocampal and amygdalar structural abnormalities may be related to the neuroanatomy of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. However, it is required novel studies with larger sample.