Obsessive compulsive disorder comorbidity in DBA

Stefano Pallanti¹^,2^,3 , Sara Masetti² , Silvia Bernardi² , Alice Innocenti² , Mariana Markella¹ and Eric Hollander¹

¹Department of Psychiatry, The Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

²Department of Psychiatry, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence, Italy

³Istituto di Neuroscienze, Florence, Italy

author email corresponding author email

Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health 2008, 4:6doi:10.1186/1745-0179-4-6


Published:	10 March 2008

Abstract

Diamond-Blackfan Anemia (DBA) is a congenital erythroid aplasia characterized as a normochromic macrocytic anemia with a selective deficiency in red blood cell precursors in otherwise normocelullar bone marrow. DBA is known to be associated with mental retardation and learning disabilities. Although comorbidities with other psychiatric conditions have not been reported in the existing literature, we report in this paper a case of a DBA patient with previously undiagnosed comorbidity of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), successfully treated with sertaline 200 mg/day and valproic acid 600 mg/day. This case of comorbid presentation has clinical, therapeutic and pathophysiological implications. Given the difficulty of distinguishing among mental retardation, learning disabilities and OCD and the importance of precocious diagnosis in treating OCD especially since there are treatment methods interfering with anemia symptoms, physicians should adapt an adequate screening tool treating a child with DBA and comorbid mental disorder.