Previous research shows that OCD is associated with serotonin-related polymorphisms (5-HTTLPR coded as triallelic and HTR2A rs6311/rs6313) and, in males, a polymorphism involved in catecholamine modulation; COMT (rs4680).
A sample of 199 patients with OCD and 200 healthy individuals was genotyped for -287A > G (rs2075507) and Val158Met (rs4680) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) by TaqMan(®) or restriction mapping.
The present case-control/pharmacogenetic study did not provide clear evidence that the COMT Val158Met polymorphism is a predictor of OCD or of OCD patients' clinical responses.
Therefore, the purpose of our study was to assess COMT activity in OCD by measuring plasma levels of 3-O-methyl-dopa (3-OMD), which result from the methylation of levodopa by COMT, and to investigate the relationship between 3-OMD levels and the V158M polymorphism.
There was a trend for an association of the COMT 158Met allele with OCD i</span>n males, and an interaction between the COMT Val158Met genotype and sex on the somatic and sensory phenomena symptom dimension, with females showing lower scores.
A haplotype composed of three SNPs [rs2097603; rs4680 (158Val/Met); rs165599] representing the major linkage disequilibrium blocks in COMT and previously implicated in functional variation, was found to be associated with ADHD and OCD in 22q11.2DS individuals.
In subjects of Afrikaner descent, the L/L genotype of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism was significantly more common in the OCD hoarding group, with a preponderance of low activity alleles, compared with nonhoarding patients and controls.
This polymorphism (valine to methionine at codon 158) has been previously reported to influence the activity of COMT by three to four-fold and has recently been reported to be associated with OCD.1 We tested for linkage using an autosomal dominant model with reduced penetrance and non-parametric methods.