This is a preliminary study to examine the factor structure, reliability, and validity of an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) screening tool for use in the Malaysian setting. A total of 199 Malaysian adults were recruited for this study. After cleaning and normalizing the data, 190 samples were left to be analyzed. Principle component analysis using varimax rotation was then performed to examine various factors derived from psychometric tools commonly used to assess OCD patients. The screening tool exhibited three factors that fit the description of obsessions and compulsions from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5th Edition (DSM 5), as well as other common symptoms that co-morbid with OCD. The labels given to the three factors were: Severity of Compulsions, Severity of Obsessions, and Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety. Reliability analysis showed high reliability with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.94, whereas convergent validity of the tool with the Yale Brown Obsessive-compulsive Scale-Self Report demonstrated good validity of r = 0.829. The three-factor model explained 68.91% of the total variance. Subsequent studies should focus on OCD factors that are culturally unique in the Malaysian context. Future research may also use online technology, which is cost-efficient and accessible, to further enhance the screening tool.
No biologically based diagnostic criteria are in clinical use today for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder (MDD), which are defined with reference to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual clinical symptoms alone. However, these disorders cannot always be well distinguished on clinical grounds and may also be comorbid. A biological blood-based dynamic genomic signature that can differentiate among OCD, MDD, and schizophrenia would therefore be of great utility. This study enrolled 77 patients with OCD, 67 controls with no psychiatric illness, 39 patients with MDD, and 40 with schizophrenia. An OCD-specific gene signature was identified using blood gene expression analysis to construct a predictive model of OCD that can differentiate this disorder from healthy controls, MDD, and schizophrenia using a logistic regression algorithm. To verify that the genes selected were not derived as a result of chance, the algorithm was tested twice. First, the algorithm was used to predict the cohort with true disease/control status and second, the algorithm predicted the cohort with disease/control status randomly reassigned (null set). A six-gene panel (COPS7A, FKBP1A, FIBP, TP73-AS1, SDF4, and GOLGA8A) discriminated patients with OCD from healthy controls, MDD, and schizophrenia in the training set (with an area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve of 0.938; accuracy, 86%; sensitivity, 88%; and specificity, 85%). Our findings indicate that a blood transcriptomic signature can distinguish OCD from healthy controls, MDD, and schizophrenia. This finding further confirms the feasibility of using dynamic blood-based genomic signatures in psychiatric disorders and may provide a useful tool for clinical staff engaged in OCD diagnosis and decision making.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the relations of childhood trauma (CT) and obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptom dimensions to suicide ideation in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Seventy OCD outpatients with lifetime suicide attempts and 60 controls were included. Participants completed the Scale for Suicide Ideation (SSI), the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF), the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), the Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (DOCS) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21). Among OCD patients, 97.1% had current suicide ideation. OCD patients revealed higher scores on CT, suicide ideation, depression and anxiety than controls. The CT history of sexual abuse (SA) and OC symptom dimension of unacceptable thoughts explained suicide ideation. It was concluded that SA and unacceptable thoughts may contribute to high suicidality and have important implications for the assessment and treatment of suicide risk in OCD patients with lifetime suicide attempts.