Miguel Ángel Fullana and his colleagues from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Department of Psychiatry and Legal Medicine, the Institute of Psychiatric Treatment of Hospital de Mar in Barcelona and King's College Institute of Psychiatry, London, examined data from the Dunedin Study, a longitudinal study that has been running in New Zealand since 1973 and is the only place in the world where a long-term follow-up of different psychological variables has taken place from childhood to adulthood with a sample of one thousand people.

The researchers focused on whether participants showed repeated signs of obsessive ideas (e.g. recurrent and undesired thoughts to harm others) and compulsive rituals a need to wash their hands constantly, to check up on small everyday tasks to prevent harm or repeatedly carrying out activities that seem meaningless, etc.) when participants were aged 11, 26 and 32.

They found a significant correlation between obsessions and compulsions at age 11 and OCD as an adult. Those who displayed obsessive or compulsive behaviour at 11 were six times as likely to develop the clinical disorder as an adult.

"There is nevertheless no need to become alarmed with the cases of children who manifest these symptoms, since they are very common amongst children aged 8 to 10, while the percentage of adults with this disorder does not reach 2%. What should be done is focus on preventive measures for these children, since we've seen that the risk is much lower amongst the rest of the population", Dr Fullana stated.