Clinical correlates of caudate volume in drug-naïve adult patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

The neurobiological basis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been theorized to reflect a dysfunction of cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuits, of which the caudate nucleus forms a critical component. However, structural imaging studies of the caudate in OCD are relatively scarce. To ascertain the clinical correlates of caudate volume in OCD, we report magnetic resonance imaging findings in a large sample of drug-naïve OCD patients in comparison with group-matched healthy controls. In this study, caudate volume was measured in coronal magnetic resonance brain images (high resolution 1-mm slice thickness) of 49 DSM-IV OCD patients and compared with that of 39 matched healthy controls. The caudate volume was measured separately for the head and body of the caudate. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) did not reveal significant differences in caudate volume between OCD patients and controls (whole group), with age, sex and intracranial volume as covariates. However, on examining the sexual dimorphism in the volume differences, male patients compared to male controls had significantly larger right caudate volume. The volume of the left caudate body showed a significant negative correlation with the total severity score on the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) on partial correlation analysis. Our study failed to show significant differences in caudate volumes between OCD patients and controls. However, it demonstrated a robust relationship between volume of the left caudate body and the severity of OCD. Additionally, there was a sexual dimorphism in caudate volume in OCD.