Word: ocd
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ALTHOUGH SCANS CAN TELL YOU THE landscape of the obsessive-compulsive brain, they can't tell you how it got to be that way. As with many other psychological disorders, research is revealing that ocd has a powerful genetic component. Having any blood relative with ocd puts your risk of the disorder at 12%, and while that seems low, it's still more than four times as high as that of the U.S. population as a whole...
...disorder comes to you through the genes, the next job is to determine which ones. A team of investigators at Johns Hopkins University last summer discovered half a dozen areas in the human genome that appear to be linked to the development of OCD. Analyzing 1,008 blood samples from 219 families in which at least two siblings had the disorder, they discovered gene markers at six sites on five chromosomes that appear more frequently in those kids than in family members and other people without OCD. That study did not tease out how those genes do their damage...
...much on hand. Then the signals just keep coming. In the case of the alarm centers in the brain, that means the warning bell just keeps on ringing. "Glutamate has to be taken up quickly because otherwise it becomes toxic to the brain cells," says Vladimir Coric, director of OCD research at Yale University and a leader in studies of the chemical...
What makes the glutamate-related gene especially suspect is the particular people it affects the most. OCD strikes males and females about evenly, but early-onset forms tend to target boys more than girls. This is particularly true in cases in which the boys also exhibit the involuntary tics or vocalizations often associated with Tourette's syndrome. Interacting with the glutamate gene are three genes related to androgens, or masculinizing hormones. Interacting with those is another gene that has been implicated in Tourette's. Gather all these together in the same chromosomal neighborhood, and they can make trouble. "Kids...
Other compelling, if controversial, research has long pursued an entirely different cause of OCD: streptococcal infection. As long ago as the 17th century, British physician Thomas Sydenham first noticed a link between childhood strep and the later onset of a tic condition that became known as Sydenham's chorea. Modern researchers who saw a link between tics and OCD began wondering if, in some cases, strep might be involved with both...