Stroke: Attention!

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a serious chronic mental illness that manifests as recurring obsessive thoughts, including fear of pollution, the need for symmetry, sexual obsession, and repetitive compulsive behaviors, including excessive cleaning and sequencing And repeated inspections, these are all compulsive behaviors felt by the individual
.

The World Health Organization lists obsessive-compulsive disorder as one of the top ten most disabling diseases in the world, with a lifetime prevalence of 1% to 3%2; however, obsessive-compulsive disorder is often overlooked in primary care settings and often goes untreated
.

There is increasing evidence that there is an association between obsessive-compulsive disorder and stroke- related metabolic disorders, including obesity and diabetes
.

However, the relationship between obsessive-compulsive disorder and subsequent stroke has hardly been explored
.

In this way, Mu-Hong Chen and others in Taiwan Province of China used Taiwan’s health insurance research database, including a large sample size and longitudinal follow-up study design, to investigate the time between obsessive-compulsive disorder and stroke, including ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes.

The main hypothesis: Patients with OCD, especially the elderly, have an increased risk of new strokes during the follow-up period compared to non-OCD controls
.

Using data collected from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan between 2001 and 2010, 28 064 adult patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (Ninth Edition of the International Classification of Diseases, clinical modification [ICD-9-CM] code.

300.

They found that compared with the non-obsessive-compulsive control group, patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (hazard ratio [HR], 3.
02 [95% CI, 1.
91-4.
77]), especially middle-aged people (HR, 2.
66 [95% CI, 1.
34- 5.
29]) and the elderly (HR, 3.
46 [95% CI, 1.
70-7.
05]), the risk of ischemic stroke is increased during the follow-up period
.

There was no difference in the cumulative HR of hemorrhagic stroke between the OCD group and the non-OCD group (HR, 0.
87 [95% CI, 0.
42-1.
80])
.

In patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, short-term (HR, 1.
69 [95% CI, 0.
74-3.
88]; HR, 0.
31 [95% CI, 0.
05-1.
95]) and long-term use of obsessive-compulsive disorder drugs ( HR, 1.
37 [95% CI, 0.
60-3.
16]; HR, 0.
90 [95% CI, 0.
22-3.
76]) has no correlation with ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke
.

The important significance of this research lies in the discovery: clinicians should closely monitor the cerebrovascular disease and related risks of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder
.