Directory UMM :Data Elmu:jurnal:B:Biological Psichatry:Vol48.Issue4.2000:
Thalamic Volume in Pediatric Obsessive–Compulsive
Disorder Patients before and after Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy
David R. Rosenberg, Nili R. Benazon, Andrew Gilbert, April Sullivan, and
Gregory J. Moore
Background: Neurobiologic abnormalities in the thalamus have been implicated in the pathophysiology of
obsessive– compulsive disorder. We recently reported increased thalamic volume in treatment-naive pediatric
obsessive– compulsive disorder patients versus casematched healthy comparison subjects that decreased to
levels comparable to control subjects after effective paroxetine therapy. To our knowledge, no prior study has
measured neuroanatomic changes in the thalamus of
obsessive– compulsive disorder patients near illness onset
before and after cognitive behavioral therapy.
Methods: Volumetric magnetic resonance imaging studies were conducted in 11 psychotropic drug-naive 8 –17year-old children with obsessive– compulsive disorder before and after 12 weeks of effective cognitive behavioral
therapy monotherapy ($30% reduction in obsessive–
compulsive disorder symptom severity).
Results: No significant change in thalamic volume was
observed in obsessive– compulsive disorder patients before and after cognitive behavioral therapy.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that reduction in
thalamic volume after paroxetine therapy may be specific
to paroxetine treatment and not the result of a general
treatment response or spontaneous improvement. These
results are preliminary in view of the small sample
studied. Biol Psychiatry 2000;48:294 –300 © 2000 Society of Biological Psychiatry
Key Words: Obsessive– compulsive disorder, pediatric,
thalamus, magnetic resonance imaging, cognitive behavioral therapy
From the Departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neurosciences (DRR, NRB, AS,
GJM), Pediatrics (DRR), and Radiology (GJM), Wayne State University
School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan, and University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (AG).
Address reprint requests to David R Rosenberg, M.D., Wayne State University
School of Medicine, University Health Center, 9B-21, 4201 St. Antoine
Boulevard, Detroit MI 48201.
Received January 8, 2000; revised March 20, 2000; accepted April 1, 2000.
© 2000 Society of Biological Psychiatry
Introduction
O
bsessive– compulsive disorder (OCD) is a severe,
prevalent (Flament et al 1988; Hanna 1995; ValleniBasile et al 1994), and often chronically disabling illness
with onset in childhood or adolescence in up to 80% of all
cases (Pauls et al 1995). Investigation of early-onset OCD
is therefore critical, as it can minimize potential confounds
of illness duration and treatment intervention (Chakos et al
1994; Keshavan et al 1994).
The thalamus is a site of integration and relay and is
thought to be involved in the pathophysiology of OCD
(Baxter 1992; Insel 1992; Modell et al 1989). Partial
thalamotomy, for example, can reduce symptom severity
in treatment-refractory OCD patients (Chiocca and Martuza 1990). Metabolic abnormalities in the thalamus of
adult OCD patients associated with symptom severity and
response to treatment (Baxter 1992; Cottraux et al 1996;
Lucey et al 1995; McGuire et al 1994; Perani et al 1995;
Rauch et al 1994) provide more direct evidence for
involvement of the thalamus in OCD. More recently,
Gilbert et al (2000) reported increased thalamic volume in
21 treatment-naive pediatric OCD patients versus 21
case-matched healthy comparison subjects.
Pharmacologic treatment studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effectiveness of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in treating OCD (Grados et al
1999) and have spawned the “serotonin hypothesis” of
OCD. Baxter et al (1996) have hypothesized that the
preferential response of OCD patients to SSRIs may be a
result of thalamocortical alterations in serotonergic neurotransmission, as the thalamus has a particularly dense
serotonergic innervation (Chugani et al 1998; Oke et al
1997). Serotonin has been shown to play a critical role in
modulating thalamocortical function (Bennett-Clarke et al
1995, 1996; Chubakov et al 1986; Lebrand et al 1996;
Rhoades et al 1994; Salt and Eaton 1996). In adult OCD
patients, reduction in metabolic activity has been observed
after SSRI treatment (Baxter 1992). Using volumetric
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Gilbert et al (2000)
0006-3223/00/$20.00
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Thalamic Volume in Pediatric OCD
BIOL PSYCHIATRY
2000;48:294 –300
Table 1. Demographic and Clinical Data from Children with
Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Characteristics
Age (years)
Gender
Males
Females
Weight (kg)
Height (cm)
Parental SESa
Age of onset of first clinical
presentation (years)
Duration of illness (years)
OCD Patients (n 5 11)
Mean 6 SD (range)
12.89 6 3.23 (8.33–16.83)
5
6
44.46 6 15.06 (24.09 –72.73)
147.55 6 24.37 (96.52–175.26)
2.09 6 0.70 (1.00 –3.00)
10.52 6 2.24 (7.50 –15.17)
295
Patients and their parents were interviewed with the Kiddie
Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia, Present and
Lifetime version (Kaufman et al 1997). Exclusion criteria included any lifetime history of psychosis, bipolar disorder, major
depressive disorder, eating disorders, substance abuse or dependence, Tourette’s syndrome or other tic-related conditions, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, significant medical or neurologic disorders, autism, mental retardation, or learning
disabilities. Three patients had comorbid anxiety disorders, two
had dysthymia, one had attention-deficit disorder without hyperactivity, one had trichotillomania, and five had OCD as their sole
diagnosis. Legal guardians provided written informed consent
and children gave written assent before initiation of all studies.
2.38 6 2.28 (0.08 – 6.83)
Patients were psychotropic medication naive. Data are presented as means 6
SDs (ranges).
a
Parental socioeconomic status was measured by assessing parental education
level and the highest level of occupational functioning of the parents on a scale of
1 to 5, with 1 representing highest parental SES and 5 representing lowest parental
SES (Hollingshead 1978).
reported a reduction in thalamic volume in 10 pediatric
OCD patients associated with reduction in OCD symptom
severity after treatment with the SSRI paroxetine. These
reductions may not be specific to paroxetine therapy,
however, as they could reflect a more generalized treatment response or even spontaneous improvement. It is also
possible that the reduction in thalamic volume associated
with paroxetine treatment in OCD patients represented a
nonspecific drug effect that was independent of the subject’s symptomatic improvement, as can be seen with
basal ganglia volume increases associated with neuroleptic
treatment in schizophrenic patients (Chakos et al 1994;
Keshavan et al 1994).
To our knowledge, no prior study of OCD patients has
measured thalamic volume before and after cognitive
behavioral therapy (CBT) monotherapy in early-onset
patients. Therefore, we performed a volumetric MRI study
in treatment-naive pediatric OCD patients focusing on the
in vivo neuroanatomy of the thalamus before and after
CBT to determine whether reductions in thalamic volume
were specific to paroxetine therapy or due to a more
general treatment response.
Methods and Materials
Subjects
Seventeen right hand– dominant, psychotropic drug–naive,
8 –17-year-old OCD patients were recruited after being referred
to our child psychiatry outpatient clinic at Wayne State University. Four patients recruited into this study required psychopharmacologic intervention before completing CBT and did not have
a follow-up MRI scan. One patient refused follow-up MRI (his
baseline scan also had considerable motion artifact), whereas
another patient and family refused MRI scanning. Thus, 11
patients were analyzed before and after CBT (Table 1).
Clinical Assessments
The children’s version of the Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS; Scahill et al 1997) assessed OCD
symptom severity (range 0 – 40; obsessive symptoms, mean
score 5 11 [SD 3]; compulsive symptoms, mean score 5 12 [SD
2]; total mean score 5 22 [SD 4]). All patients with OCD had a
pretreatment CY-BOCS score of at least 17. The 17-item
Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (Hamilton 1967) was used to
measure severity of depression (mean score 5 7 [SD 5]),
whereas severity of anxiety was assessed by the Hamilton
Anxiety Rating Scale (Hamilton 1959; mean score 5 8 [SD 6]).
A neuropsychologic screening examination measured general
intelligence (Ammons and Ammons 1962), motor coordination
(Knights and Norwood 1980), and attention (Wechsler 1991) and
revealed no abnormalities.
MRI Studies
Volumetric MRI studies were performed at the Children’s
Hospital of Michigan Imaging Center (1.5 T, Horizon 5.7,
General Electric, Milwaukee), which is dedicated to scanning
only children. Image acquisition and analysis were identical to
the methods used in our previous study of thalamic volume in
pediatric OCD patients before and after paroxetine therapy and
case-matched healthy comparison subjects (Gilbert et al 2000)
and are not described here.
Neuroanatomic boundaries for the left and right thalami were
adapted from published neuroimaging studies of the thalamus
(Andreason et al 1994; Buchsbaum et al 1996; Pakkenberg 1992;
Portas et al 1998; Staal et al 1998). A manual tracing technique
was utilized to acquire discrete measurements from the left and
right thalami (see Figure 1 [Gilbert et al 2000] for a representative multislice series of coronal images of thalamic measurement
with boundary delineation). The anterior boundary was the
mammillary bodies and interventricular foramen, and the posterior boundary was where the thalamus merged under the crus
fornix. The lateral boundary was defined as the internal capsule
and the third ventricle was considered the medial boundary. The
inferior boundary was the hypothalamus, and the superior boundary was the main body of the lateral ventricle (Portas et al 1998).
The number of coronal slices used to quantify the thalamus
ranged from 13 to 22 slices, with an average of 17.5. Detailed
definitions are available upon request. Intracranial volume mea-
296
D.R. Rosenberg et al
BIOL PSYCHIATRY
2000;48:294 –300
Table 2. Clinical Assessment Data from Psychotropic Medication–Naive Pediatric Patients with
Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) before and after Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Subjectsa
Instrument
Total score CY-BOCS
Obsessive subscale score
Compulsive subscale score
HAM-A
HAM-D
Brain region
Intracranial volume (cm3)
Right thalamic volume (cm3)
Left Thalamic volume (cm3)
Patients with OCD
before treatment
(mean 6 SD)
Patients with OCD
after CBT
(mean 6 SD)
tb
p
22.45 6 4.16
10.82 6 2.64
11.64 6 2.34
7.91 6 5.99
7.09 6 4.91
10.45 6 5.48
4.73 6 2.87
5.64 6 2.80
2.00 6 2.72
2.18 6 2.82
5.41
4.72
5.24
3.18
3.33
.000
.001
.000
.01
.008
1208.17 6 115.27
4.37 6 .95
4.39 6 1.04
1203.34 6 122.20
4.32 6 1.10
4.46 6 1.15
0.40
0.13
0.20
.69
.90
.85
CY-BOCS, children’s version of the Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale; HAM-A, Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale;
HAM-D, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale.
a
There were 11 OCD patients studied before and after cognitive behavioral therapy
b
Paired t test, df 5 10.
surement has also been described previously (Rosenberg et al
1997).
All measurements were made by a single well-trained and
reliable rater (AS). Pre- and posttreatment patients were measured at the same time with the rater blind to the time or identity
of the scans. Interrater (AS, AG) and intrarater reliabilities for
thalamic measurements (r 5 .97–.99) and intracranial volume
(r 5 .99) were high.
were they receiving any additional psychotherapy or family
therapy. Obsessive– compulsive disorder patients were not enrolled in this study if 1) they were unable to be maintained on
CBT monotherapy because of comorbid neuropsychiatric condition necessitating psychotropic medication intervention, 2) there
was a need for additional psychosocial interventions, or 3) the
patient’s parents refused to consent to their child’s participation
in the trial and/or the child psychiatrist (DRR) or psychologist
(NRB) determined that alternative treatment was indicated.
CBT
After completion of the clinical assessment and baseline volumetric MRI study, the patients started a 12-week course of CBT
by a cognitive behavioral psychologist (NRB). Patients received
14 60-min sessions of CBT over a period of 12 weeks. Treatment
was derived from two similar therapy manuals (March and Mulle
1998; Schwartz et al 1996). Standardized exposure and response
prevention (E/RP) techniques were used to disrupt the association between 1) the obsessions and anxiety and 2) the anxiety and
the performance of compulsive behaviors. Each obsession and
compulsion was assigned a value that indicated a subjective unit
of distress on a scale of 0 to 100, in which the item at 100 is the
most anxiety provoking to confront. Behavioral hierarchies were
constructed. With the support and assistance of the therapist,
patients were directed to confront their fears in a graduated
fashion. Parents were invited to attend four of the 12 sessions and
were offered psychoeducation and coaching on how to cope
more effectively with their child’s symptoms. To supplement and
enhance E/RP, Schwartz’s Four-Step Self-Treatment Method
(Schwartz et al 1996) was utilized to help patients cultivate a
greater self-awareness of their more subtle symptoms and the
activities and situations that they avoid doing because of their
fears. The four steps (relabel, reattribute, refocus, and revalue)
provide patients with specific tools with which to respond to their
obsessions in a goal-oriented manner, allowing them to progress
through the behavioral hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations.
All patients were treated with CBT only and did not receive
any psychotropic medication during the course of the study, nor
Data Analysis
Thalamic volume and intracranial volume were analyzed using
paired t tests before and after CBT. Paired t tests were also used
to compare pre- and posttreatment CY-BOCS and Hamilton
Depression and Anxiety scores before and after CBT. An
unpaired t test was also used to compare all 15 pretreatment
thalamic volumetric measurements in OCD patients (including
study noncompleters) to the 11 post-CBT scans. Two-way
gender by diagnosis analyses of covariance were conducted to
delineate gender effects. Two-tailed significance tests (p , .05)
are reported throughout.
Results
After 12 weeks of CBT, patients with OCD showed a
significant decrease in OCD symptom severity as reflected
by their total CY-BOCS scores and obsessive and compulsive subscale scores (Table 2). There was also a
significant decrease in anxiety and depressive symptom
severity.
Left [t(20) 5 0.16, p 5 .88, confidence interval (CI) 5
1.05– 0.9] and right thalamic volumes [t(20) 5 0.12, p 5
.91, CI 5 0.86 – 0.97] did not change significantly in the
11 OCD patients after CBT (Figure 1). No significant
differences were observed between pretreatment right
Thalamic Volume in Pediatric OCD
BIOL PSYCHIATRY
2000;48:294 –300
297
Figure 1. Left (A) and right (B) thalamic volumes before and after treatment. Lines indicate means. OCD, obsessive– compulsive
disorder; CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy.
[t(24) 5 0.22, p 5 .79, CI 5 0.71– 0.89, 4.40 cm3 6 0.88
cm3 vs. 4.32 cm3 6 1.10 cm3, respectively] and left
thalamic volumes [t(24) 5 0.28, p 5 .79, CI 5 1.00 – 0.77,
4.34 cm3 6 1.03 cm3 vs. 4.46 cm3 6 1.15 cm3, respectively] in the 15 patients studied at baseline (including
study noncompleters) and the 11 patients after 12 weeks of
CBT (study completers). Intracranial volume also did not
differ significantly in OCD patients before and after CBT
[t(20) 5 0.10, p 5 .93, CI 5 100.82–110.49).
Comparable ages were observed in male (12 6 3) and
female patients (14 6 3) with OCD [t(9) 5 0.87, p 5 .41].
Age of onset of illness did not differ in male and female
OCD patients [t(9) 5 0.22, p 5 .83; 11 6 3 years vs. 10 6
1.5 years]. There were no gender-related differences in
OCD patients before or after treatment in thalamic and
intracranial volumes.
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first neuroimaging study of
treatment-naive OCD patients investigating thalamic volume before and after CBT. Our results suggest that
abnormalities in thalamic anatomy may not be reversible
with effective CBT. The observed differences between
right and left thalamic volumes in pediatric OCD patients
before and after CBT were 61% and 62%, respectively.
When baseline right and left thalamic volumes for the 15
OCD patients (including study noncompleters) were compared to the 11 post-CBT thalamic measures (study
completers), comparable differences between right (61%)
and left (61%) thalamic volumes were observed. The
temporal stability of the in vivo measure of thalamic
volume before and after CBT is, therefore, comparable to
the temporal stability of thalamic volume observed in
healthy children scanned at 12-week intervals (Gilbert et
al 2000). In contrast, a 19% reduction in thalamic volume
was observed in 10 OCD patients studied before and after
paroxetine therapy. This suggests that the preferential
therapeutic effects of SSRIs such as paroxetine in OCD
may be related to their impact on serotonin neurotransmission in thalamocortical circuitry (Baxter et al 1996).
Reductions in thalamic volume may also be specific to
paroxetine treatment rather than the result of a general
treatment response or spontaneous improvement; however, nonspecific drug effects independent of symptom
improvement cannot be ruled out.
Given the small sample size, our findings of no change
in thalamic volume after CBT in OCD patients must be
considered preliminary and require replication; however, a
much larger effect size (d 5 1.28) was observed for
reduction in thalamic volume in 10 OCD patients after
paroxetine treatment (Gilbert et al 2000) compared with
change in thalamic volume in 11 OCD patients after CBT
(d 5 0.07). Although mean pretreatment total CY-BOCS
OCD scores were higher in the patients treated with
paroxetine than in those who received CBT [28.19 6 5.99
vs. 22.45 6 4.16, t(30) 5 3.83, p 5 .001], pretreatment
thalamic volumes were comparable in both groups [4.65 6
1.05 vs. 4.37 6 1.10, respectively, for the right thalamus,
t(30) 5 0.34 p 5 .74, CI 5 0.65– 0.91; 4.52 6 1.01 vs.
4.39 61.04, respectively, for the left thalamus, t(30)
50.73, p 5 .47, CI 5 0.50 –1.05]. Mean pretreatment
Hamilton Depression Rating Scale scores [7.09 6 4.91 vs.
7.80 6 4.64, respectively, t(19) 5 0.34, p 5 .74],
Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale scores [7.91 6 5.99 vs.
8.30 6 4.99, respectively, t(19) 5 0.16, p 5 .87], Yale
298
D.R. Rosenberg et al
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2000;48:294 –300
Global Tic Severity Scale (Leckman et al 1989) scores
[3.45 6 7.71 vs. 2.20 6 5.69, respectively, t(19) 5 0.42, p 5
.68], illness duration [2.37 6 2.28 vs. 1.31 6 1.37, respectively, t(19) 5 1.28, p 5 .22], and mean age of onset of OCD
[10.52 6 2.24 vs. 10.08 6 1.76, respectively, t(19) 5 0.50,
p 5 .62] were also comparable in both groups.
It should be noted that, as in our prior study comparing
thalamic volume before and after paroxetine therapy
(Gilbert et al 2000), we were unable to distinguish discrete
thalamic nuclei. Using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Fitzgerald et al (2000) demonstrated localized
functional neurochemical marker abnormalities in the
medial thalamus but not the lateral in a similar sample of
treatment-naive pediatric OCD patients, as compared with
healthy control subjects. Specifically, reductions in Nacetyl-aspartate, a marker of neuronal viability, in the
medial thalamus but not the lateral in pediatric OCD
patients were observed. Neurobiological abnormalities in
the dorsomedial nucleus of the thalamus are believed to be
critically involved in the pathogenesis of OCD (Modell et
al 1989). Our prior volumetric studies have identified
localized abnormalities in other regions of interest in OCD
including the prefrontal cortex, with case– control differences observed in the ventral prefrontal cortex but not the
dorsal (Rosenberg and Keshavan 1998) and the putamen
but not the caudate nucleus (Rosenberg et al 1997).
In this study patients were not randomly assigned to
CBT or pharmacotherapy. Treatment cell was based on
clinician and parent/patient decision. A controlled, randomized study would have been superior for delineating
the specificity of neuroanatomic change in the thalamus in
relation to paroxetine therapy versus CBT. Moreover, full
treatment effects can be delayed beyond 12 weeks and up
to several months (Grados et al 1999) so that volumetric
assessment after 12 weeks of CBT is indicated.
Recent investigation also suggests that more sophisticated neuroimaging techniques such as positron emission
tomography (PET), functional MRI, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy may be superior to standard volumetric MRI for measuring abnormalities in OCD (Bartha et al
1998). Using PET, Schwartz et al (1996) observed a
significant decrease in caudate metabolic activity after
CBT in adult OCD patients comparable to changes reported after pharmacotherapy (Baxter 1992). Although
putative radiation risks make PET studies more difficult in
pediatric populations, functional MRI studies in adult
OCD patients (Breiter et al 1996) suggest that this technique may prove viable in pediatric OCD patients. In fact,
in vivo functional MRI studies that actively drive the
system and magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies of
brain chemistry may be superior to standard neuroanatomic MRI studies in neuropsychiatric conditions such as
OCD (Bartha et al 1998; Rauch et al 1994).
Taken together, our findings suggest that reductions in
thalamic volume may be relatively specific to effective
SSRI treatment and may not be due to a more general
treatment response or spontaneous resolution of symptoms. Longitudinal studies of patients treated with paroxetine and CBT beyond 12 weeks are critical to tease apart
mechanisms of response to treatment in OCD and their
relationship to thalamic volumetric measures. Equally
critical are future studies before and after SSRI treatment
and CBT in brain regions other than the thalamus, particularly the prefrontal cortex and striatum.
This work was supported in part by the Joe Young Sr. Foundation and
grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, Rockville, Maryland
(Nos. MH01372 and MH59299) and the National OCD Foundation,
Milford, Connecticut, to DRR.
We are grateful to Dr. Judith Rapoport for her consultation on this
data, Dr. Joel Ager for statistical consultation, and Shauna MacMillan
and Carla Nolan for assistance with manuscript production.
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Disorder Patients before and after Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy
David R. Rosenberg, Nili R. Benazon, Andrew Gilbert, April Sullivan, and
Gregory J. Moore
Background: Neurobiologic abnormalities in the thalamus have been implicated in the pathophysiology of
obsessive– compulsive disorder. We recently reported increased thalamic volume in treatment-naive pediatric
obsessive– compulsive disorder patients versus casematched healthy comparison subjects that decreased to
levels comparable to control subjects after effective paroxetine therapy. To our knowledge, no prior study has
measured neuroanatomic changes in the thalamus of
obsessive– compulsive disorder patients near illness onset
before and after cognitive behavioral therapy.
Methods: Volumetric magnetic resonance imaging studies were conducted in 11 psychotropic drug-naive 8 –17year-old children with obsessive– compulsive disorder before and after 12 weeks of effective cognitive behavioral
therapy monotherapy ($30% reduction in obsessive–
compulsive disorder symptom severity).
Results: No significant change in thalamic volume was
observed in obsessive– compulsive disorder patients before and after cognitive behavioral therapy.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that reduction in
thalamic volume after paroxetine therapy may be specific
to paroxetine treatment and not the result of a general
treatment response or spontaneous improvement. These
results are preliminary in view of the small sample
studied. Biol Psychiatry 2000;48:294 –300 © 2000 Society of Biological Psychiatry
Key Words: Obsessive– compulsive disorder, pediatric,
thalamus, magnetic resonance imaging, cognitive behavioral therapy
From the Departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neurosciences (DRR, NRB, AS,
GJM), Pediatrics (DRR), and Radiology (GJM), Wayne State University
School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan, and University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (AG).
Address reprint requests to David R Rosenberg, M.D., Wayne State University
School of Medicine, University Health Center, 9B-21, 4201 St. Antoine
Boulevard, Detroit MI 48201.
Received January 8, 2000; revised March 20, 2000; accepted April 1, 2000.
© 2000 Society of Biological Psychiatry
Introduction
O
bsessive– compulsive disorder (OCD) is a severe,
prevalent (Flament et al 1988; Hanna 1995; ValleniBasile et al 1994), and often chronically disabling illness
with onset in childhood or adolescence in up to 80% of all
cases (Pauls et al 1995). Investigation of early-onset OCD
is therefore critical, as it can minimize potential confounds
of illness duration and treatment intervention (Chakos et al
1994; Keshavan et al 1994).
The thalamus is a site of integration and relay and is
thought to be involved in the pathophysiology of OCD
(Baxter 1992; Insel 1992; Modell et al 1989). Partial
thalamotomy, for example, can reduce symptom severity
in treatment-refractory OCD patients (Chiocca and Martuza 1990). Metabolic abnormalities in the thalamus of
adult OCD patients associated with symptom severity and
response to treatment (Baxter 1992; Cottraux et al 1996;
Lucey et al 1995; McGuire et al 1994; Perani et al 1995;
Rauch et al 1994) provide more direct evidence for
involvement of the thalamus in OCD. More recently,
Gilbert et al (2000) reported increased thalamic volume in
21 treatment-naive pediatric OCD patients versus 21
case-matched healthy comparison subjects.
Pharmacologic treatment studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effectiveness of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in treating OCD (Grados et al
1999) and have spawned the “serotonin hypothesis” of
OCD. Baxter et al (1996) have hypothesized that the
preferential response of OCD patients to SSRIs may be a
result of thalamocortical alterations in serotonergic neurotransmission, as the thalamus has a particularly dense
serotonergic innervation (Chugani et al 1998; Oke et al
1997). Serotonin has been shown to play a critical role in
modulating thalamocortical function (Bennett-Clarke et al
1995, 1996; Chubakov et al 1986; Lebrand et al 1996;
Rhoades et al 1994; Salt and Eaton 1996). In adult OCD
patients, reduction in metabolic activity has been observed
after SSRI treatment (Baxter 1992). Using volumetric
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Gilbert et al (2000)
0006-3223/00/$20.00
PII S0006-3223(00)00902-1
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BIOL PSYCHIATRY
2000;48:294 –300
Table 1. Demographic and Clinical Data from Children with
Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Characteristics
Age (years)
Gender
Males
Females
Weight (kg)
Height (cm)
Parental SESa
Age of onset of first clinical
presentation (years)
Duration of illness (years)
OCD Patients (n 5 11)
Mean 6 SD (range)
12.89 6 3.23 (8.33–16.83)
5
6
44.46 6 15.06 (24.09 –72.73)
147.55 6 24.37 (96.52–175.26)
2.09 6 0.70 (1.00 –3.00)
10.52 6 2.24 (7.50 –15.17)
295
Patients and their parents were interviewed with the Kiddie
Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia, Present and
Lifetime version (Kaufman et al 1997). Exclusion criteria included any lifetime history of psychosis, bipolar disorder, major
depressive disorder, eating disorders, substance abuse or dependence, Tourette’s syndrome or other tic-related conditions, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, significant medical or neurologic disorders, autism, mental retardation, or learning
disabilities. Three patients had comorbid anxiety disorders, two
had dysthymia, one had attention-deficit disorder without hyperactivity, one had trichotillomania, and five had OCD as their sole
diagnosis. Legal guardians provided written informed consent
and children gave written assent before initiation of all studies.
2.38 6 2.28 (0.08 – 6.83)
Patients were psychotropic medication naive. Data are presented as means 6
SDs (ranges).
a
Parental socioeconomic status was measured by assessing parental education
level and the highest level of occupational functioning of the parents on a scale of
1 to 5, with 1 representing highest parental SES and 5 representing lowest parental
SES (Hollingshead 1978).
reported a reduction in thalamic volume in 10 pediatric
OCD patients associated with reduction in OCD symptom
severity after treatment with the SSRI paroxetine. These
reductions may not be specific to paroxetine therapy,
however, as they could reflect a more generalized treatment response or even spontaneous improvement. It is also
possible that the reduction in thalamic volume associated
with paroxetine treatment in OCD patients represented a
nonspecific drug effect that was independent of the subject’s symptomatic improvement, as can be seen with
basal ganglia volume increases associated with neuroleptic
treatment in schizophrenic patients (Chakos et al 1994;
Keshavan et al 1994).
To our knowledge, no prior study of OCD patients has
measured thalamic volume before and after cognitive
behavioral therapy (CBT) monotherapy in early-onset
patients. Therefore, we performed a volumetric MRI study
in treatment-naive pediatric OCD patients focusing on the
in vivo neuroanatomy of the thalamus before and after
CBT to determine whether reductions in thalamic volume
were specific to paroxetine therapy or due to a more
general treatment response.
Methods and Materials
Subjects
Seventeen right hand– dominant, psychotropic drug–naive,
8 –17-year-old OCD patients were recruited after being referred
to our child psychiatry outpatient clinic at Wayne State University. Four patients recruited into this study required psychopharmacologic intervention before completing CBT and did not have
a follow-up MRI scan. One patient refused follow-up MRI (his
baseline scan also had considerable motion artifact), whereas
another patient and family refused MRI scanning. Thus, 11
patients were analyzed before and after CBT (Table 1).
Clinical Assessments
The children’s version of the Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS; Scahill et al 1997) assessed OCD
symptom severity (range 0 – 40; obsessive symptoms, mean
score 5 11 [SD 3]; compulsive symptoms, mean score 5 12 [SD
2]; total mean score 5 22 [SD 4]). All patients with OCD had a
pretreatment CY-BOCS score of at least 17. The 17-item
Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (Hamilton 1967) was used to
measure severity of depression (mean score 5 7 [SD 5]),
whereas severity of anxiety was assessed by the Hamilton
Anxiety Rating Scale (Hamilton 1959; mean score 5 8 [SD 6]).
A neuropsychologic screening examination measured general
intelligence (Ammons and Ammons 1962), motor coordination
(Knights and Norwood 1980), and attention (Wechsler 1991) and
revealed no abnormalities.
MRI Studies
Volumetric MRI studies were performed at the Children’s
Hospital of Michigan Imaging Center (1.5 T, Horizon 5.7,
General Electric, Milwaukee), which is dedicated to scanning
only children. Image acquisition and analysis were identical to
the methods used in our previous study of thalamic volume in
pediatric OCD patients before and after paroxetine therapy and
case-matched healthy comparison subjects (Gilbert et al 2000)
and are not described here.
Neuroanatomic boundaries for the left and right thalami were
adapted from published neuroimaging studies of the thalamus
(Andreason et al 1994; Buchsbaum et al 1996; Pakkenberg 1992;
Portas et al 1998; Staal et al 1998). A manual tracing technique
was utilized to acquire discrete measurements from the left and
right thalami (see Figure 1 [Gilbert et al 2000] for a representative multislice series of coronal images of thalamic measurement
with boundary delineation). The anterior boundary was the
mammillary bodies and interventricular foramen, and the posterior boundary was where the thalamus merged under the crus
fornix. The lateral boundary was defined as the internal capsule
and the third ventricle was considered the medial boundary. The
inferior boundary was the hypothalamus, and the superior boundary was the main body of the lateral ventricle (Portas et al 1998).
The number of coronal slices used to quantify the thalamus
ranged from 13 to 22 slices, with an average of 17.5. Detailed
definitions are available upon request. Intracranial volume mea-
296
D.R. Rosenberg et al
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2000;48:294 –300
Table 2. Clinical Assessment Data from Psychotropic Medication–Naive Pediatric Patients with
Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) before and after Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Subjectsa
Instrument
Total score CY-BOCS
Obsessive subscale score
Compulsive subscale score
HAM-A
HAM-D
Brain region
Intracranial volume (cm3)
Right thalamic volume (cm3)
Left Thalamic volume (cm3)
Patients with OCD
before treatment
(mean 6 SD)
Patients with OCD
after CBT
(mean 6 SD)
tb
p
22.45 6 4.16
10.82 6 2.64
11.64 6 2.34
7.91 6 5.99
7.09 6 4.91
10.45 6 5.48
4.73 6 2.87
5.64 6 2.80
2.00 6 2.72
2.18 6 2.82
5.41
4.72
5.24
3.18
3.33
.000
.001
.000
.01
.008
1208.17 6 115.27
4.37 6 .95
4.39 6 1.04
1203.34 6 122.20
4.32 6 1.10
4.46 6 1.15
0.40
0.13
0.20
.69
.90
.85
CY-BOCS, children’s version of the Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale; HAM-A, Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale;
HAM-D, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale.
a
There were 11 OCD patients studied before and after cognitive behavioral therapy
b
Paired t test, df 5 10.
surement has also been described previously (Rosenberg et al
1997).
All measurements were made by a single well-trained and
reliable rater (AS). Pre- and posttreatment patients were measured at the same time with the rater blind to the time or identity
of the scans. Interrater (AS, AG) and intrarater reliabilities for
thalamic measurements (r 5 .97–.99) and intracranial volume
(r 5 .99) were high.
were they receiving any additional psychotherapy or family
therapy. Obsessive– compulsive disorder patients were not enrolled in this study if 1) they were unable to be maintained on
CBT monotherapy because of comorbid neuropsychiatric condition necessitating psychotropic medication intervention, 2) there
was a need for additional psychosocial interventions, or 3) the
patient’s parents refused to consent to their child’s participation
in the trial and/or the child psychiatrist (DRR) or psychologist
(NRB) determined that alternative treatment was indicated.
CBT
After completion of the clinical assessment and baseline volumetric MRI study, the patients started a 12-week course of CBT
by a cognitive behavioral psychologist (NRB). Patients received
14 60-min sessions of CBT over a period of 12 weeks. Treatment
was derived from two similar therapy manuals (March and Mulle
1998; Schwartz et al 1996). Standardized exposure and response
prevention (E/RP) techniques were used to disrupt the association between 1) the obsessions and anxiety and 2) the anxiety and
the performance of compulsive behaviors. Each obsession and
compulsion was assigned a value that indicated a subjective unit
of distress on a scale of 0 to 100, in which the item at 100 is the
most anxiety provoking to confront. Behavioral hierarchies were
constructed. With the support and assistance of the therapist,
patients were directed to confront their fears in a graduated
fashion. Parents were invited to attend four of the 12 sessions and
were offered psychoeducation and coaching on how to cope
more effectively with their child’s symptoms. To supplement and
enhance E/RP, Schwartz’s Four-Step Self-Treatment Method
(Schwartz et al 1996) was utilized to help patients cultivate a
greater self-awareness of their more subtle symptoms and the
activities and situations that they avoid doing because of their
fears. The four steps (relabel, reattribute, refocus, and revalue)
provide patients with specific tools with which to respond to their
obsessions in a goal-oriented manner, allowing them to progress
through the behavioral hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations.
All patients were treated with CBT only and did not receive
any psychotropic medication during the course of the study, nor
Data Analysis
Thalamic volume and intracranial volume were analyzed using
paired t tests before and after CBT. Paired t tests were also used
to compare pre- and posttreatment CY-BOCS and Hamilton
Depression and Anxiety scores before and after CBT. An
unpaired t test was also used to compare all 15 pretreatment
thalamic volumetric measurements in OCD patients (including
study noncompleters) to the 11 post-CBT scans. Two-way
gender by diagnosis analyses of covariance were conducted to
delineate gender effects. Two-tailed significance tests (p , .05)
are reported throughout.
Results
After 12 weeks of CBT, patients with OCD showed a
significant decrease in OCD symptom severity as reflected
by their total CY-BOCS scores and obsessive and compulsive subscale scores (Table 2). There was also a
significant decrease in anxiety and depressive symptom
severity.
Left [t(20) 5 0.16, p 5 .88, confidence interval (CI) 5
1.05– 0.9] and right thalamic volumes [t(20) 5 0.12, p 5
.91, CI 5 0.86 – 0.97] did not change significantly in the
11 OCD patients after CBT (Figure 1). No significant
differences were observed between pretreatment right
Thalamic Volume in Pediatric OCD
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2000;48:294 –300
297
Figure 1. Left (A) and right (B) thalamic volumes before and after treatment. Lines indicate means. OCD, obsessive– compulsive
disorder; CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy.
[t(24) 5 0.22, p 5 .79, CI 5 0.71– 0.89, 4.40 cm3 6 0.88
cm3 vs. 4.32 cm3 6 1.10 cm3, respectively] and left
thalamic volumes [t(24) 5 0.28, p 5 .79, CI 5 1.00 – 0.77,
4.34 cm3 6 1.03 cm3 vs. 4.46 cm3 6 1.15 cm3, respectively] in the 15 patients studied at baseline (including
study noncompleters) and the 11 patients after 12 weeks of
CBT (study completers). Intracranial volume also did not
differ significantly in OCD patients before and after CBT
[t(20) 5 0.10, p 5 .93, CI 5 100.82–110.49).
Comparable ages were observed in male (12 6 3) and
female patients (14 6 3) with OCD [t(9) 5 0.87, p 5 .41].
Age of onset of illness did not differ in male and female
OCD patients [t(9) 5 0.22, p 5 .83; 11 6 3 years vs. 10 6
1.5 years]. There were no gender-related differences in
OCD patients before or after treatment in thalamic and
intracranial volumes.
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first neuroimaging study of
treatment-naive OCD patients investigating thalamic volume before and after CBT. Our results suggest that
abnormalities in thalamic anatomy may not be reversible
with effective CBT. The observed differences between
right and left thalamic volumes in pediatric OCD patients
before and after CBT were 61% and 62%, respectively.
When baseline right and left thalamic volumes for the 15
OCD patients (including study noncompleters) were compared to the 11 post-CBT thalamic measures (study
completers), comparable differences between right (61%)
and left (61%) thalamic volumes were observed. The
temporal stability of the in vivo measure of thalamic
volume before and after CBT is, therefore, comparable to
the temporal stability of thalamic volume observed in
healthy children scanned at 12-week intervals (Gilbert et
al 2000). In contrast, a 19% reduction in thalamic volume
was observed in 10 OCD patients studied before and after
paroxetine therapy. This suggests that the preferential
therapeutic effects of SSRIs such as paroxetine in OCD
may be related to their impact on serotonin neurotransmission in thalamocortical circuitry (Baxter et al 1996).
Reductions in thalamic volume may also be specific to
paroxetine treatment rather than the result of a general
treatment response or spontaneous improvement; however, nonspecific drug effects independent of symptom
improvement cannot be ruled out.
Given the small sample size, our findings of no change
in thalamic volume after CBT in OCD patients must be
considered preliminary and require replication; however, a
much larger effect size (d 5 1.28) was observed for
reduction in thalamic volume in 10 OCD patients after
paroxetine treatment (Gilbert et al 2000) compared with
change in thalamic volume in 11 OCD patients after CBT
(d 5 0.07). Although mean pretreatment total CY-BOCS
OCD scores were higher in the patients treated with
paroxetine than in those who received CBT [28.19 6 5.99
vs. 22.45 6 4.16, t(30) 5 3.83, p 5 .001], pretreatment
thalamic volumes were comparable in both groups [4.65 6
1.05 vs. 4.37 6 1.10, respectively, for the right thalamus,
t(30) 5 0.34 p 5 .74, CI 5 0.65– 0.91; 4.52 6 1.01 vs.
4.39 61.04, respectively, for the left thalamus, t(30)
50.73, p 5 .47, CI 5 0.50 –1.05]. Mean pretreatment
Hamilton Depression Rating Scale scores [7.09 6 4.91 vs.
7.80 6 4.64, respectively, t(19) 5 0.34, p 5 .74],
Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale scores [7.91 6 5.99 vs.
8.30 6 4.99, respectively, t(19) 5 0.16, p 5 .87], Yale
298
D.R. Rosenberg et al
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2000;48:294 –300
Global Tic Severity Scale (Leckman et al 1989) scores
[3.45 6 7.71 vs. 2.20 6 5.69, respectively, t(19) 5 0.42, p 5
.68], illness duration [2.37 6 2.28 vs. 1.31 6 1.37, respectively, t(19) 5 1.28, p 5 .22], and mean age of onset of OCD
[10.52 6 2.24 vs. 10.08 6 1.76, respectively, t(19) 5 0.50,
p 5 .62] were also comparable in both groups.
It should be noted that, as in our prior study comparing
thalamic volume before and after paroxetine therapy
(Gilbert et al 2000), we were unable to distinguish discrete
thalamic nuclei. Using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Fitzgerald et al (2000) demonstrated localized
functional neurochemical marker abnormalities in the
medial thalamus but not the lateral in a similar sample of
treatment-naive pediatric OCD patients, as compared with
healthy control subjects. Specifically, reductions in Nacetyl-aspartate, a marker of neuronal viability, in the
medial thalamus but not the lateral in pediatric OCD
patients were observed. Neurobiological abnormalities in
the dorsomedial nucleus of the thalamus are believed to be
critically involved in the pathogenesis of OCD (Modell et
al 1989). Our prior volumetric studies have identified
localized abnormalities in other regions of interest in OCD
including the prefrontal cortex, with case– control differences observed in the ventral prefrontal cortex but not the
dorsal (Rosenberg and Keshavan 1998) and the putamen
but not the caudate nucleus (Rosenberg et al 1997).
In this study patients were not randomly assigned to
CBT or pharmacotherapy. Treatment cell was based on
clinician and parent/patient decision. A controlled, randomized study would have been superior for delineating
the specificity of neuroanatomic change in the thalamus in
relation to paroxetine therapy versus CBT. Moreover, full
treatment effects can be delayed beyond 12 weeks and up
to several months (Grados et al 1999) so that volumetric
assessment after 12 weeks of CBT is indicated.
Recent investigation also suggests that more sophisticated neuroimaging techniques such as positron emission
tomography (PET), functional MRI, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy may be superior to standard volumetric MRI for measuring abnormalities in OCD (Bartha et al
1998). Using PET, Schwartz et al (1996) observed a
significant decrease in caudate metabolic activity after
CBT in adult OCD patients comparable to changes reported after pharmacotherapy (Baxter 1992). Although
putative radiation risks make PET studies more difficult in
pediatric populations, functional MRI studies in adult
OCD patients (Breiter et al 1996) suggest that this technique may prove viable in pediatric OCD patients. In fact,
in vivo functional MRI studies that actively drive the
system and magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies of
brain chemistry may be superior to standard neuroanatomic MRI studies in neuropsychiatric conditions such as
OCD (Bartha et al 1998; Rauch et al 1994).
Taken together, our findings suggest that reductions in
thalamic volume may be relatively specific to effective
SSRI treatment and may not be due to a more general
treatment response or spontaneous resolution of symptoms. Longitudinal studies of patients treated with paroxetine and CBT beyond 12 weeks are critical to tease apart
mechanisms of response to treatment in OCD and their
relationship to thalamic volumetric measures. Equally
critical are future studies before and after SSRI treatment
and CBT in brain regions other than the thalamus, particularly the prefrontal cortex and striatum.
This work was supported in part by the Joe Young Sr. Foundation and
grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, Rockville, Maryland
(Nos. MH01372 and MH59299) and the National OCD Foundation,
Milford, Connecticut, to DRR.
We are grateful to Dr. Judith Rapoport for her consultation on this
data, Dr. Joel Ager for statistical consultation, and Shauna MacMillan
and Carla Nolan for assistance with manuscript production.
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