Brain Structural Correlates of Subclinical ObsessiveCompulsive Symptoms in Healthy Children Maria Suñol1#, Oren Contreras-Rodríguez1#, Dídac Macià2, Gerard Martínez-Vilavella2, 1 1 2 3 1,4* Ignacio Martínez-Zalacaín , Marta Subirà , Jesús Pujol , Jordi Sunyer Carles Soriano-Mas 1. Department of Psychiatry, Bellvitge University Hospital, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute-IDIBELL, and CIBERSAM….17, Barcelona, Spain 2. MRI Research Unit, Department of Radiology, Hospital del Mar, and CIBERSAM-21, Barcelona, Spain 3. ISGlobal - Institute of Salud Global de Barcelona, and CIBERESP, Barcelona, Spain *
[email protected] 4. Department of Psychobiology and Methodology of Health Sciences, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. # Shared first authors
Background Subclinical obsessive-compulsive (O-C) symptoms are frequent in healthy individuals and their presence at infancy may predict an adult diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). To detect and characterize vulnerable individuals, the present study aimed to assess the effect of sex and age in the associations of brain volumes and O-C traits in a sample of healthy children. Method 255 healthy children (mean age=9.7±0.8 years, 49% females) were assessed with the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Child Version (OCI-CV) and underwent a brain structural magnetic resonance imaging examination. Analyses: 1. Total score and the scores on the different symptom domains (doubt-checking, hoarding, ordering, obsessing, washing and neutralizing) were correlated with regional gray (GM) and white matter (WM) volumes following a voxel-based morphometry protocol. 2. Subjects were grouped by sex (girls, boys) and age (younger, older) separately to assess the main effect of these factors on trait - brain morphometry associations. 3. Subjects were grouped by both sex and age (younger girls, older girls, younger boys, older boys) to assess the interaction effect of these factors on trait - brain morphometry associations. Statistical significance was set at p
