The Research On Gender Differences And Disgust Processing In Patients With Obsessive-compulsive Disorder

Objective: Obsessive–compulsive disorder(OCD)is a chronic psychiatric disorder characterized by the presence of obsessions and compulsions that cause substantial distress and functional impairment.OCD has been characterized in terms of dysfunction of disgust cognitive-affective processing,and sex differences in clinical features of OCD have also been noted.Disgust has been described as a central emotion in OCD and plays an important role in the pathogenesis and maintenance of OCD.Disgust also can be induced by contaminated unclean things and immoral behavior,which is called core disgust and moral disgust.At present,there are few studies on the core disgust and moral disgust in obsessive compulsive disorder,and fewer studies on gender differences in disgust cognitive processing for patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.Are there any connections between disgust processing and gender differences behind some of the individual differences in OCD? This study will use lexical judgment to explore the gender differences and disgust processing in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder(OCD).Further analysis from the perspective of disgust cognitive processing may be the key to understanding compulsive disorders.Methods: According to International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems,Tenth Revision(ICD-10),74 patients diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder were included,and recruited 64 healthy people matched with gender,age and education level as normal controls.The patients with OCD and the normal controls weregrouped according to the sex.74 patients with OCD(39 males and 35 females)and 65 normal healthy controls(35 males and 30 females)were assessed with Padua inventory-Washington State University revision(PI-WSUR),Yale-Brown obsessive-compulsive scale(Y-BOCS)and completed the lexical decision task.To evaluation their OCD symptoms and severity,and results of the tasks were recording reaction time,accuracy and disgust rating intensity of core disgust words,moral disgust words and neutral words,and to analyze the gender differences in disgust processing in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and normal healthy controls.Results:(1)There were no differences between patients with OCD and the normal controls in accuracy and disgust rating intensity of neutral words,but comparing with reaction time of core disgust words,moral disgust words,neutral words and rating intensity of core disgust words and moral disgust,patients with OCD were longer in time and higher disgust rating intensity than normal controls in core disgust words and moral disgust words(p<0.01);(2)There were no differences between males and females in accuracy and rating intensity of core disgust words and moral disgust words,but comparing with reaction time of core disgust words and moral disgust words,females were shorter in time than males(p<0.05 or p<0.01)in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.In normal healthy controls,there were only differences between males and females in reaction time of neutral words,females were also shorter in time than males(p<0.01).Conclusion: Patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder have dysfunction of disgust cognitive processing,the disgust of the patient is stronger than the normal person.There are gender differences in disgust cognitive processing in patients with OCD,females with OCD have higher core disgust and moral disgust than males,but there are no gender differences in disgust cognitive processing in healthy controls.Finally femaleswith OCD have a special high sense of moral disgust.