Supervisors info:
Ιωάννης Ζέρβας, Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ, Επιβλέπων
Γεώργιος Χρούσος, Ομότιμος Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Χριστίνα Δαρβίρη, Επισκ. Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
Recent findings highlight the association between HPA axis, cortisol and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. However, to date, cortisol levels of OCD patients have been assessed in body fluids, such as serum, saliva or urine, leading to ambiguous results due to lack of stability of these methods. The aim of this study was to investigate mean levels of stress exposure in 32 OCD patients compared to 32 sex and age-matched healthy controls via measuring endogenous cortisol in hair segments reflecting the last 3 months. Psychometric measures, which included BDI, FQ, STAI, PSS and ECQ-R, were distributed to all participants. OCD patients showed significantly lower hair cortisol concentrations than healthy controls (p=0.001, r=0.41). Nevertheless, OCD patients exhibited significantly higher scores than control group, in all psychometric instruments administered, with medium to high effect sizes for all mentioned differences. No significant correlation was found between HCC and Y-BOCS total scores. After classifying OCD patients into subtypes, according to the nature of their symptomatology, “washers/cleaners” showed the lowest HCC (compared to the categories “checking/harming”, “ordering/symmetry” and “sexual/religious obsessions”). The novel finding of hypocortisolism on OCD patients could be attributed to a possible down-regulation of the HPA axis, as an adaptive response to chronic stress exposure. Given that disorder’s subtypes contribute to the great heterogeneity in OCD spectrum, studies with larger samples could investigate HCC in patients with distinct symptomatology, so as to develop a basis for neuroendocrine profiling. Further work is needed in order to explore HPA axis’ activity over the course of the disorder.
Keywords:
Stress, Obsessive Compulsive disorder, OCD, HPA axis, Hair cortisol
