Journal of International Psychiatry

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common and often debilitating psychiatric illness.The etiology and pathophysiology of OCD remain unclear. Structural and functional neuroimaging findings suggest that disturbance of the the cortico-striatal-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) circuits may underlie OCD.But what have changed in neurometabolites in the abnormal brain circuits ? There is no consistent conclusion yet. In this review.we summarize the results of N-acetylaspartate (NAA),Glx (glutamate+glutamine) and gamma-aminobutyric acid(GABA) with 1H-magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) in OCD patients and attempt to investigate the direction and location of neurochemical alteration.Most of the MRS studies have shown the abnormalities of NAA, Glx and GABA in the CSTC circuits within OCD patients, especially in the thedorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC),orbito frontal cortex (OFC),anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), striatum and thalamus.However,the direction of alterations and the correlations with clinical variables remain ambiguous.Suggestions for future researches that have the potential to further identify the pathogenesis of OCD are presented.

OCD; MRS; NAA; Glx; GABA