Neurosteroid Levels in Patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

OBJECTIVE: Changes in serum neurosteroid levels have been reported in stress-related disorders such as anxiety and depression, but not in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We thus investigated such changes in patients with OCD. METHODS: We compared the serum levels of progesterone, pregnanolone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate (DHEA-S), cortisol and testosterone in 30 patients with OCD and 30 healthy controls. RESULTS: When male and female patients were evaluated together, DHEA and cortisol levels were significantly higher in patients with OCD than the control group. When the genders were evaluated separately, DHEA and cortisol levels were higher in female patients than the female controls. The increase in DHEA levels in female patients is likely an effect of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. In contrast, cortisol levels in male patients were higher than the control group, while testosterone levels were lower. The increased cortisol and decreased testosterone levels in male patients likely involves the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that neurosteroid levels in patients with OCD should be investigated together with the HPA and HPG axes in future studies.

The Effect of Agoraphobia on Oxidative Stress in Panic Disorder

We aimed to investigate whether agoraphobia (A) in panic disorder (PD) has any effects on oxidative and anti-oxidative parameters. We measured total antioxidant capacity (TAC), paraoxonase (PON), arylesterase (ARE) antioxidant and malondialdehyde (MDA) oxidant levels using blood samples from a total of 31 PD patients with A, 22 PD patients without A and 53 control group subjects. There was a significant difference between the TAC, PON, ARE and MDA levels of the three groups consisting of PD with A, PD without A and the control group. The two-way comparison to clarify the group creating the difference showed that the TAC, PON, and ARE antioxidants were significantly lower in the PD with A group compared to the control group while the MDA oxidant was significantly higher. There was no significant difference between the PD without A and control groups for TAC, PON, ARE and MDA levels. We clearly demonstrated that the oxidative stress and damage to the anti-oxidative mechanism are significantly higher in the PD group with A. These findings suggest that oxidative/anti-oxidative mechanisms may play a more important role on the pathogenesis of PB with A.