Pituitary volume in medication-naïve adults with obsessive compulsive disorder.

Pituitary volume is considered to reflect hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation, and this has been studied in various psychiatric disorders. This study demonstrates that pituitary volume as assessed through the region of interest manual tracing method in 50 medication-naïve adult patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder was not significantly different compared with 40 healthy control subjects (687.80 ± 126.60 versus 694.73 ± 131.59, F=0.55, p=0.46). The authors also compared the patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder without any comorbid axis I conditions (N=35) with healthy control subjects and found no difference in the pituitary volumes (681.62 ± 130.85 versus 694.72 ± 131.59, F=0.90, p=0.35). This emphasizes the need to examine hypothalamo-pituitary axis structures after taking into consideration various potential confounders such as medications and depression.