Dold M, et al. - The association between major depressive disorder (MDD) and comorbid obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was investigated in this cross-sectional European multicenter study. The physicians proposed that in MDD, concurrent OCD had a low prevalence rate compared to the reverse prevalence rates of comorbid MDD in OCD. In addition, concurrent OCD provoked higher suicide risk and was correlated with a characteristic prescription pattern reflected by a high amount of polypsychopharmaceutical treatment strategies comprising particular augmentation with antipsychotics and benzodiazepines.

• Using descriptive statistics, analyses of covariance (ANCOVA), and binary logistic regression analyses, socio-demographic, clinical, and treatment features of 1346 adult MDD patients were compared between MDD subjects with and without concurrent OCD.

• A point prevalence of comorbid OCD in MDD was 1.65%.
• A higher proportion of patients in the MDD + comorbid OCD group showed concurrent panic disorder (31.81% vs 7.77%, p < .001), suicide risk (52.80% vs 44.81%, p=.04), polypsychopharmacy (95.45% vs 60.21%, p=.001), and augmentation treatment with antipsychotics (50.00% vs 25.46%, p=.01) and benzodiazepines (68.18% vs 33.31%, p=.001) compared to the MDD control group without concurrent OCD.
• Furthermore, they were treated with higher mean doses of their antidepressant drugs (in fluoxetine equivalents: 48.99 mg/day ± 18.81 vs 39.68 mg/day ± 20.75, p=.04).
• Factors significantly associated with comorbid OCD were comorbid panic disorder (odds ratio (OR)=4.17, p=.01), suicide risk (OR=2.56, p=.04), simultaneous treatment with more psychiatric drugs (OR=1.51, p=<.05), polypsychopharmacy (OR=14.29, p=.01), higher antidepressant dosing (OR=1.01, p=<.05), and augmentation with antipsychotics (OR=2.94, p=.01) and benzodiazepines (OR=4.35, p=.002) in the logistic regression analyses.