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Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common and severe psychiatric illness that affects 1–3% of the population and presents a well-established co-morbidity with major depressive disorder (MDD). Twin and family studies have suggested a genetic component in the etiology of OCD, although the mode of inheritance is unknown. Pharmacotherapy of the disease implicates both serotonergic and dopaminergic pathways. Previously, guided by the 22q11 microdeletion-related psychiatric phenotype, we provided evidence for a sexually dimorphic association between OCD and the gene for catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT). In this report, we use 110 nuclear OCD families to analyze the inheritance of variants of COMT and monoamine oxidase-A (MAOA), another gene modulating monoamine metabolism.

A sample of 110 nuclear OCD families was collected, and lifetime diagnoses were …