Changes in compulsion and anxiety symptoms with nicotine transdermal patches in non-smoking obsessive-compulsive disorder patients.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Some of the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms can be elicited in rats by the administration of quinpirole (D2/D3 dopaminergic agonist).

Nicotine administration blocked some aspect of checking behavior in that model.

The main goal of this study was to determine if the clinical manifestations of OCD non smoking patients change with the administration of transdermal nicotine patches.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were children, teenagers and adults, both men and women.

All of them were OCD according to DSM-IV criteria.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and placebo-controlled.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) could be set against what happens without it.

Clinical scorings were done with Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Administration, Cutaneous, Anxiety, Nicotine, Nicotinic Agonists and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2003 (Revista de investigacion clinica; organo del Hospital de Enfermedades de la Nutricion), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.