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. 2022 Dec 1:318:204-216.
doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.08.084. Epub 2022 Aug 27.

Associations of medication with subcortical morphology across the lifespan in OCD: Results from the international ENIGMA Consortium

Iliyan Ivanov  1 Premika S W Boedhoe  2 Yoshinari Abe  3 Pino Alonso  4 Stephanie H Ameis  5 Paul D Arnold  6 Srinivas Balachander  7 Justin T Baker  8 Nerisa Banaj  9 Nuria Bargalló  10 Marcelo C Batistuzzo  11 Francesco Benedetti  12 Jan C Beucke  13 Irene Bollettini  14 Silvia Brem  15 Brian P Brennan  8 Jan Buitelaar  16 Rosa Calvo  17 Yuqi Cheng  18 Kang Ik K Cho  19 Sara Dallaspezia  14 Damiaan Denys  20 Juliana B Diniz  21 Benjamin A Ely  22 Jamie D Feusner  23 Sónia Ferreira  24 Kate D Fitzgerald  25 Martine Fontaine  26 Patricia Gruner  27 Gregory L Hanna  25 Yoshiyuki Hirano  28 Marcelo Q Hoexter  21 Chaim Huyser  29 Keisuke Ikari  30 Anthony James  31 Fern Jaspers-Fayer  32 Hongyan Jiang  18 Norbert Kathmann  33 Christian Kaufmann  33 Minah Kim  34 Kathrin Koch  35 Jun Soo Kwon  36 Luisa Lázaro  17 Yanni Liu  25 Christine Lochner  37 Rachel Marsh  26 Ignacio Martínez-Zalacaín  4 David Mataix-Cols  38 José M Menchón  4 Luciano Minuzzi  39 Astrid Morer  17 Pedro Morgado  24 Akiko Nakagawa  28 Takashi Nakamae  3 Tomohiro Nakao  30 Janardhanan C Narayanaswamy  7 Erika L Nurmi  40 Sanghoon Oh  41 Chris Perriello  42 John C Piacentini  40 Maria Picó-Pérez  24 Fabrizio Piras  9 Federica Piras  9 Y C Janardhan Reddy  7 Daniela Rodriguez Manrique  35 Yuki Sakai  43 Eiji Shimizu  28 H Blair Simpson  26 Noam Soreni  44 Carles Soriano-Mas  45 Gianfranco Spalletta  46 Emily R Stern  47 Michael C Stevens  48 S Evelyn Stewart  32 Philip R Szeszko  1 David F Tolin  48 Daan van Rooij  16 Dick J Veltman  20 Ysbrand D van der Werf  2 Guido A van Wingen  20 Ganesan Venkatasubramanian  7 Susanne Walitza  15 Zhen Wang  49 Anri Watanabe  3 Lidewij H Wolters  20 Xiufeng Xu  18 Je-Yeon Yun  34 Mojtaba Zarei  50 Fengrui Zhang  51 Qing Zhao  49 Neda Jahanshad  52 Sophia I Thomopoulos  52 Paul M Thompson  52 Dan J Stein  53 Odile A van den Heuvel  2 Joseph O'Neill  40 ENIGMA-OCD Working Group
Collaborators, Affiliations

Associations of medication with subcortical morphology across the lifespan in OCD: Results from the international ENIGMA Consortium

Iliyan Ivanov et al. J Affect Disord. .

Abstract

Background: Widely used psychotropic medications for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may change the volumes of subcortical brain structures, and differently in children vs. adults. We measured subcortical volumes cross-sectionally in patients finely stratified for age taking various common classes of OCD drugs.

Methods: The ENIGMA-OCD consortium sample (1081 medicated/1159 unmedicated OCD patients and 2057 healthy controls aged 6-65) was divided into six successive 6-10-year age-groups. Individual structural MRIs were parcellated automatically using FreeSurfer into 8 regions-of-interest (ROIs). ROI volumes were compared between unmedicated and medicated patients and controls, and between patients taking serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs), tricyclics (TCs), antipsychotics (APs), or benzodiazepines (BZs) and unmedicated patients.

Results: Compared to unmedicated patients, volumes of accumbens, caudate, and/or putamen were lower in children aged 6-13 and adults aged 50-65 with OCD taking SRIs (Cohen's d = -0.24 to -0.74). Volumes of putamen, pallidum (d = 0.18-0.40), and ventricles (d = 0.31-0.66) were greater in patients aged 20-29 receiving APs. Hippocampal volumes were smaller in patients aged 20 and older taking TCs and/or BZs (d = -0.27 to -1.31).

Conclusions: Results suggest that TCs and BZs could potentially aggravate hippocampal atrophy of normal aging in older adults with OCD, whereas SRIs may reduce striatal volumes in young children and older adults. Similar to patients with psychotic disorders, OCD patients aged 20-29 may experience subcortical nuclear and ventricular hypertrophy in relation to APs. Although cross-sectional, present results suggest that commonly prescribed agents exert macroscopic effects on subcortical nuclei of unknown relation to therapeutic response.

Keywords: Age; Benzodiazepines; OCD; Psychotropics; SRIs; Subcortical volumes.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest Dr. Arnold reported holding the Alberta Innovates Translational Health Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health outside the submitted work. Prof. Mataix-Cols receives royalties for contributing articles to UpToDate, Wolters Kluwer Health and fees from Elsevier for editorial tasks (all unrelated to the submitted work). Dr. Narayanaswamy reported Government of India grants DST INSPIRE faculty grant IFA12-LSBM-26 and BT/06/IYBA/2012 outside the submitted work. Dr. Reddy reported Government of India grants SR/S0/HS/0016/2011 and BT/PR13334/Med/30/259/2009 outside the submitted work. Dr. Venkatasubramanian reported Wellcome-DBT India Alliance grant 500236/Z/11/Z outside the submitted work. Dr. Simpson reported Biohaven Research support for a clinical trial and royalties from UpToDate, Inc. and Cambridge University Press outside the submitted work. Dr. Soreni reported support from Lundbeck-IIT outside the submitted work. Dr. Walitza has received in the last 3 years royalties from Thieme Hogrefe, Kohlhammer, Springer, Beltz; Her work was supported in the last 3 years by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), diff. EU FP7s, HSM Hochspezialisierte Medizin of the Kanton Zurich, Switzerland, Bfarm Germany, ZInEP, Hartmann Müller Stiftung, Olga Mayenfisch, Gertrud Thalmann Fonds (all unrelated to the submitted work). Dr. Thompson has received a research grant from Biogen, Inc., unrelated to the topic of this paper.

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