title: Heredity in comorbid bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder patients.
abstract: Partly due to the overlap of symptom groupings in DSM, psychiatric comorbidity is extremely common. One of the most common and difficult to manage comorbid conditions is the co-occurrence of bipolar disorder (BD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). However, the key nosological question about this condition - whether they are two distinct disorders or a subtype of one of the disorders - remains unresolved. In order to help address this unanswered question, we updated our recent systematic review, searching the electronic databases MEDLINE, Embase, and PsycINFO to specifically investigate the heredity in BD-OCD patients. We identified a total of 8 relevant papers, the majority of which found that, compared to non-BD-OCD patients, BD-OCD patients were more likely to have a family history for mood disorders and less likely to have a family history for OCD. These results support the view that the majority of cases of comorbid BD-OCD are, in fact, BD cases. If confirmed in larger, more focused studies, this conclusion would have important nosological and clinical implications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Parma, Parma, Italy; Mood Disorders Program, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Amerio
authors.affiliation: Department of Mental Health, Local Health Service, Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tonna
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical, Biotechnological and Translational Sciences, Unit of Public Health, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Odone
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Brendon
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Stubbs
authors.affiliation: Mood Disorders Program, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA; Tufts University Medical School, Department of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: S Nassir
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Ghaemi
keywords: bipolar disorder; comorbidity; heredity; obsessive-compulsive