Genomic research is arguably the roadway to the future of OCD treatment, as well as the treatment of most if not all of the mental illnesses currently afflicting mankind. It's been less than a decade since a blueprint of the human genome was created. And, in that time, genes have been identified that shed light on Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the class of anxiety disorders including OCD. As the functions of these genes are discovered, and the impact of their variations (mutations) measured, the goal of creating medicines and therapies to compensate for what's missing or gone askew is suddenly within the reach of researchers.

Here is how Thomas R. Insel and Francis S. Collins described the dramatic precipice they and other medical researchers now occupy in the 2005 anthology Research Advances in Genetics and Genomics: Implications for Psychiatry.

This is exactly the kind of creative thinking made possible by scientists' new access to the brain through sophisticated imaging techniques and genomic research. It is the often stated hope of those working in these pioneering areas that this massive infusion of new data and understanding of the brain will yield solutions and hope to children and families like yours who are coping with OCD. By many accounts, these solutions are in the not too distant future.

Brain Imaging

In another promising area of new OCD research, brain activity as measured by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has begun to reveal distinctive patterns in people with OCD and their close family members. Researchers at the Brain Mapping Unit at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain gave study participants a computerized test that involved pressing a left or right button as quickly as possible when arrows appeared on-screen. When a beep sounded, participants were supposed to stop their responses. This test objectively tested the participants' ability to stop repetitive behaviors. Both OCD patients and their relatives fared worse on the computer task than did members of the control group. The MRI images taken during these tests, of those with OCD or their relatives showed decreases of gray matter in brain regions key to suppressing responses and habits. Researchers pointed to their study results as further evidence that the brain changes associated with OCD tend to run in families, and may represent a genetically transmitted risk factor for developing the condition.