Orbitofrontal cortex volumes in patients with somatization disorder and its relationship with clinical variables

Somatization disorder (SD) is a common mental disorders, there are stil spots illuminated about the causes of this disease. Recently, in neuroimaging studies, some abnormalities that may be related to thesigns and symptoms of the disease have been shown. In our study we were aimed to investigate the morphometric alterations of orbitofrontal cortex in the somatization patients to understand the pathophsiology of the disorder.Somatization disorder (SD) is a common mental disorders, there are stil spots illuminated about the causes of this disease. Recently, in neuroimaging studies, some abnormalities that may be related to thesigns and symptoms of the disease have been shown. In our study we were aimed to investigate the morphometric alterations of orbitofrontal cortex in the somatization patients to understand the pathophsiology of the disorder.Volumes of the orbitofrontal cortex were measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in a sample of patients with DSM-IV SD and healty comparison subjects. In SD patients, the OFC volumes in both right and left sides were statistically significantly reduced compared to those of healthy controls.Our results consider that OFC has an important relationship with both pathophysiology and clinical course of the disease. However, it require new investigations with much larger sample particularly consisting of cognitive tests apart from magnatic resonance imaging, as we performed here.