Symptom dimensions, clinical course and comorbidity in men and women with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The study aimed to compare male and female patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) across symptom dimensions, clinical course and comorbidity. A cross-sectional study was undertaken with 858 adult OCD patients (DSM-IV) from the Brazilian Research Consortium on Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders. Patients were evaluated using structured interviews, including the Dimensional Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (DY-BOCS) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders (SCID-I). The sample was composed of 504 women (58.7%) and 354 men (41.3%) with a mean age of 35.4 years-old (range: 18-77). Men were younger, more frequently single and presented more tics, social phobia and alcohol use disorders. Among men, symptom interference occurred earlier and symptoms of the sexual/religious dimension were more common and more severe. Conversely, women were more likely to present symptoms of the aggressive, contamination/cleaning and hoarding dimension and comorbidity with specific phobias, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, trichotillomania, skin picking and "compulsive" buying. In the logistic regression, female gender remained independently associated with the aggressive and contamination/cleaning dimensions. In both genders the aggressive dimension remained associated with comorbid post-traumatic stress disorder, the sexual/religious dimension with major depression and the hoarding dimension with tic disorders. Gender seems to be relevant in the determination of OCD clinical presentation and course and should be considered an important aspect when defining more homogeneous OCD subgroups.
['Torresan|Ricardo C|RC|', 'Ramos-Cerqueira|Ana Teresa A|AT|', 'Shavitt|Roseli G|RG|', 'do Rosário|Maria Conceição|MC|', 'de Mathis|Maria Alice|MA|', 'Miguel|Euripedes C|EC|', 'Torres|Albina R|AR|']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D000367:Age Factors D000368:Aged D000374:Aggression D001938:Brazil D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D019964:Mood Disorders D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder D015995:Prevalence D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales D012727:Sex Characteristics D013405:Suicide D055815:Young Adult
Symptom dimensions Obsessive-compulsive disorder Gender Phenomenology Phenotype Sex