Abstract
BACKGROUND: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a common medical condition among children and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a frequent, chronic, costly, and disabling disorder among them. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to investigate obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in children with early stages of CKD, and to compare it with the occurrence of OCD in healthy children. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In this case-control study, we evaluated 160 children aged 7 to 17 years old who were visited in the pediatric clinics of Amir-Kabir hospital, Arak, Iran. The control group consisted of 80 healthy children and the case group included 80 children with Stage 1 to 3 CKD. The ages and sex of the children in the two groups were matched. OCD in children was evaluated using the obsessive compulsive inventory-child version (OCI-CV). RESULTS: The mean scores of doubting/checking (case: 3.52 ± 2.54, control: 2.5 ± 2.32, P = 0.007) and ordering (case: 2.59 ± 1.81, control: 1.5 ± 2.56, P = 0.005) in the children with CKD was significantly higher than in the healthy ones. Moreover, the mean total scores for the OCI-CV of the children with CKD at 15.32 ± 7.69 was significantly higher than the scores of the healthy ones at 11.12 ± 2.54 (P = 0.021). There was a significant correlation between the CKD duration and doubting/checking (P = 0.004, correlation coefficient (CC): 0.4), obsessing (P = 0.06, CC: 0.02), washing (P = 0.031, CC: 0.8), ordering (P = 0.001, CC: 0.2), and the total scores of the OCI-CV questionnaire (P = 0.04, CC: 0.4). CONCLUSIONS: The risk of OCD in children with CKD is significantly higher than that in healthy children. Although the results seem to suggest that psychiatric intervention can be helpful in treating OCD in children with CKD, further investigation into the medical condition is required so as to obtain more definitive conclusions.