Body Weight Changes after Deep Brain Stimulation for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or Depression

Abstract

Background: In 2010, we published an often-cited case report describing smoking cessation and substantial weight loss after deep brain stimulation (DBS) for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in an obese patient. To test whether this single observation was also observed in the treated population at large, the weight changes of a larger cohort of patients who underwent DBS for OCD or major depressive disorder (MDD) were studied.

Results: Data were available for 46 patients (30 OCD and 16 MDD patients; mean age 46.2 years, SD 10.9) with an average baseline body mass index (BMI) of 28.0 (SD 7.3), 26 of whom (57%) were overweight (n = 11), obese (n = 12), or morbidly obese (n = 3). Mean follow-up was 3.8 years (range 10 months to 8.7 years, SD 2.3), after which the average BMI was 28.1 (SD 7.0), not significantly different from baseline. The average BMI of the 15 patients with (morbid) obesity at baseline decreased from 36.8 to 34.6 (ns), while the average BMI of the 31 normal or "only" overweight patients at baseline increased from 23.8 to 25.0 (ns).

Conclusion: There was no significant change in body weight on group level after DBS for either OCD or MDD.

Keywords: Body mass index; Deep brain stimulation; Depression; Obesity; Obsessive-compulsive disorder; Weight.

Fig. 1

Scatterplot of BMI at baseline (x axis) and at last follow-up (y axis) for all patients. The vertical distance to the diagonal represents the change in BMI. Dashed lines indicate the various BMI categories, so that a change in category after surgery can be seen for each subject. Patients below the diagonal had a decrease in BMI and those above the diagonal had an increase in BMI. In both OCD and MDD, there were no significant differences in the changes in BMI between the diagnostic groups, or between responders and nonresponders to DBS.