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MRI study of the cavum septum pellucidum in obsessive–compulsive disorder

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Abstract

The cavum septum pellucidum (CSP), a putative marker of neurodevelopmental anomaly, has been associated with an increased risk of several psychiatric disorders. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the CSP in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) compared with healthy control subjects. Seventy-one patients with OCD and 71 healthy volunteers matched for age and sex were evaluated with magnetic resonance imaging. We evaluated the CSP using criteria employed in previous studies: presence of the CSP, length of the CSP, and overall size of the CSP, measured in five grades, ranging from grades 0 (no CSP) to 4 (severe CSP). We evaluated OCD symptom severity using the Yale–Brown Obsessive–Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS). The CSP presence was significantly greater in the OCD group (60.6%) than in control subjects (29.6%), and CSP size grade was significantly larger in the OCD group (χ2 = 15.609, P = 0.004). CSP length showed no significant group difference. Among patients with OCD, those with a CSP had higher scores on the obsession subscale of the Y-BOCS than those without a CSP (Z = −2.358, P = 0.018), while they did not show significant difference from those without a CSP in the compulsion subscale of the Y-BOCS, age, duration of illness, or age at onset. These results indicate that neurodevelopmental alterations in midline structures might contribute to the pathogenesis of OCD.

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Acknowledgments

This paper was supported by a Grant (M103KV010012-08K2201-01210) from the Brain Research Center of the 21st Century Frontier Research Program funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Korea.

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  1. Department of Psychiatry, Seoul National University College of Medicine, 101 Daehak-no, Chongno-gu, Seoul, 110-744, Korea

    Myong-Wuk Chon, Jung-Seok Choi, Do-Hyung Kang, Myung Hun Jung & Jun Soo Kwon

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  1. Myong-Wuk Chon
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Correspondence to Jun Soo Kwon.

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Chon, MW., Choi, JS., Kang, DH. et al. MRI study of the cavum septum pellucidum in obsessive–compulsive disorder. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 260, 337–343 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-009-0081-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-009-0081-6

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