One in every one hundred adults in the United States has obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This condition leaves a person full of anxiety while experiencing excessive unwanted thoughts, impulses, or urges that are commonly followed by repetitive, compulsive behaviors. OCD interferes in the person’s life, and they understand that their fears are irrational or their routine actions unnecessary, but they think and do them anyway. Some examples include excessive cleaning, checking, or grooming that leaves the person feeling distressed.
Currently, there are two forms of treatment for OCD. There is psychological therapy, which involves helping a person face their fears and obsessive thoughts so they can refrain from “putting them right” with compulsions. And there’s medicine, which is usually an antidepressant that helps by altering the balance of chemicals in the brain. Even though these treatments can be effective, they can take several months to start working, and they aren’t precisely striking at the root of the problem.
The scientific community is working diligently to understand the causes of OCD. It could be that several factors together trigger the development of OCD and that stressful life events, personality traits, and hormonal changes influence when that happens. Several theories include:
- When a behavior becomes associated with relief from anxiety, it becomes repetitive and routine, and compulsions are born.
- It is a genetic or hereditary condition.
- There are chemical, functional, and structural abnormalities in the brain.
- It is psychologically induced by distorted beliefs reinforcing and maintaining the symptoms.
Based on the theories, it seems that OCD is a built-in abnormality that may be dormant until specific thoughts mixed with life events ignite the condition at some point in the person’s life. This spark changes the chemicals in the brain, making it extremely difficult to fight the urges. It’s like an addiction.
But now there’s more. Recently, scientists at the University of Roehampton in London and the Queen Mary University of London collaborated and got one step closer to understanding the cause of OCD. They discovered that patients suffering from OCD have higher levels of a protein called Immuno-moodulin (Imood) in their lymphocytes, which is a type of immune cell. Their findings could lead to the development of a new kind of drug that targets the immune system to treat this and other mental health conditions.
The leader of the research, Professor Fulvio D’Acquisto, said:
“There is mounting evidence that the immune system plays an important role in mental disorders. And in fact, people with auto-immune diseases are known to have higher than average rates of mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and OCD. Our findings overturn a lot of conventional thinking about mental health disorders being solely caused by the central nervous system.”
Their study involved mice with high levels of this protein. The animals were treated with an antibody that neutralizes Imood. Within a matter of days, the anxious and stressed mice returned to normal. They were no longer excessively digging and grooming themselves.
The researchers then tested human immune cells from 20 healthy volunteers and 23 patients with OCD. The OCD patients’ results had six times higher Imood expression than healthy patients.
Professor D’Acquisto believes that Imood may be influencing genes in the brain cells that have been linked to OCD. He doesn’t think it directly regulates brain functions by changing the levels of chemical signals in neurons. This could explain why Imood has been linked to other mental disorders as well. Different groups of scientists elsewhere have found the same protein while researching Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
Professor D’Acquisto said:
“This is work we still have to do to understand the role of Imood. We also want to do more work with larger samples of patients to see if we can replicate what we saw in the small number we looked at in our study.
It is early still, but the discovery of antibodies – instead of the classical chemical drugs – for the treatment of mental disorders could radically change the lives of these patients as we foresee a reduced chance of side effects.”
Professor D’Acquisto’s team has filed a patent for the antibody and is now working with a drug company to develop a treatment for people. However, it will likely be another five years before the drug is ready for clinical trials.
