title: Neuropsychological performance in OCD: a study in medication-naïve patients.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with impairments in multiple neuropsychological domains but the findings are rather inconsistent across studies. One potential reason for poor replication is the confounding influence of medications. There is limited research on neuropsychological performance in medication-naïve, never treated OCD patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this study, we assessed 31 medication-naïve, never-treated, DSM-IV OCD patients free of comorbid major depression and 31 healthy controls individually matched for age, gender and years of education, with tests of attention, executive function, memory reasoning and visuo-spatial function.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Medication-naïve OCD patients did not significantly differ from healthy controls on most neuropsychological tests. Patients performed somewhat poorly only on the highest goal hierarchy of the Tower of London (TOL) test (p=0.001, effect size=0.68).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  It is intriguing to find that symptomatic, drug-naïve OCD patients did not significantly differ from healthy controls on most neuropsychological tests. Our finding of medium effect size on TOL highest goal hierarchy test suggests that brain regions outside the affective orbitofrontal loop may also be perhaps involved in OCD. This finding however needs replication because of modest effect size. Future studies should focus on studying medication-naïve, co-morbidity-free patients and relatives using symptom dimensions for consistent and robust findings.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India.
authors.forename: Rakhee
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Krishna
authors.forename: Saumya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Udupa
authors.forename: Cilna Mariam
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: George
authors.forename: Keshav J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: Biju
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Viswanath
authors.forename: Thennarasu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kandavel
authors.forename: Ganesan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Venkatasubramanian
authors.forename: Y C Janardhan
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Reddy
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*