Can a subgroup of OCD patients with motor abnormalities and poor therapeutic response be identified?
RATIONALE: In a subgroup of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), motor soft signs, tics and other movement disorders can be observed, indicating a special pathogenetic involvement of basal ganglia. OBJECTIVES: The main objective of this study was to verify the hypothesis that such motor dysfunction characterises a subgroup of OCD patients with poor treatment response. For assessing even subtle motor dysfunction, a new method for kinematical analysis of hand movements has been applied. METHODS: We examined the performance of 45 in-patients who met the DSM-IV criteria for OCD before and under therapy (sertraline and behaviour therapy) using a digitising tablet and kinematical analysis of simple handwriting and drawing movements. All subjects wrote a sentence, their signature and letter sequences. Moreover, they drew circles under different conditions. Three kinematical parameters (stroke duration, variation coefficient of peak velocity, stroke length) were calculated to qua
