Citation

Azzam AY, Seleem MA, Saada SA, Mourad HA, Mubarak AA. Middle East Curr. Psychiatr. 2022; 29(1): e52.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, SpringerOpen)

DOI

10.1186/s43045-022-00218-9

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Conduct disorder (CD) is a serious and common psychiatric disorder affecting children and adolescents. "Callous-unemotional traits" is a new specifier added to the diagnosis of CD in the DSM-5. The new specifier is thought to be associated with more severity and higher genetic load. Oxytocin is known to be related to interpersonal sympathy and social affection, and so its deficiency might be related to unemotionality. This work aims to explore the levels of serum oxytocin in adolescents with CD associated with callous-unemotional (CU) traits as compared to healthy control subjects. Twenty patients aged 12-18 years and 20 controls of the same age range were recruited. An Arabic-translated and validated version of Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview for kids (MINI-kid) was used to confirm the diagnosis. The Youth Psychopathic Inventory-short version (YPI-short version) and the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU), both parent and self-reports, were all translated into Arabic and validated by the authors and used to evaluate the sample. Evaluation of serum oxytocin level using ELISA technique was done.

Keywords

Adolescents; Callous-unemotional traits; Conduct disorder; Oxytocin