Paroxetine open-label treatment of pediatric outpatients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

OBJECTIVE

Paroxetine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor with demonstrated efficacy in treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in adults. This study evaluates the safety and effectiveness of paroxetine in pediatric OCD patients.

METHOD

In a 12-week, open-label trial of paroxetine, 20 OCD outpatients, aged 8 to 17 years, were treated for OCD with daily doses ranging from 10 to 60 mg. Target symptoms were rated at regular intervals with the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS), the Children's Global Assessment Scale, the Clinical Global Impression Scale, the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, and the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale.

RESULTS

Paroxetine proved relatively safe in this brief trial with a small sample and appeared to be effective in patients with OCD; mean CY-BOCS scores decreased significantly (z = 3.49, p = .0005) from 30.6 +/- 3.5 to 21.6 +/- 6.8 on medication. The most common side effects (n > or = 2) were hyperactivity/behavioral activation, headache, insomnia, nausea, and anxiety. Paroxetine did not have to be discontinued in any of the patients because of side effects; the most serious side effects included hyperactivity/behavioral activation in 3 younger patients (< 10 years) necessitating dosage reduction but not discontinuation.

CONCLUSIONS

Preliminary evidence suggests that short-term treatment of pediatric OCD outpatients with paroxetine may be relatively safe and effective.