A family study of obsessive-compulsive disorder

Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to determine 1) whether obsessive- compulsive disorder is familial, 2) whether there is a familial relationship between obsessive-compulsive disorder and Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome and chronic tics, and 3) whether different familial types of obsessive-compulsive disorder exist. METHOD: In this family study, all available first-degree relatives of 100 probands with obsessive-compulsive disorder were interviewed directly with structured interviews, and best-estimate diagnoses were assigned. In addition to the 466 first-degree relatives of the probands, 113 comparison subjects who were first-degree relatives of 33 psychiatrically unaffected subjects were studied with the same interviews. RESULTS: The rates of obsessive-compulsive disorder and subthreshold obsessive-compulsive disorder were significantly greater among the relatives of the probands with obsessive-compulsive disorder (10.3% and 7.9%, respectively) than among the comparison subjects (1.9% and 2.0%, res...

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