The prevalence of obsessive symptoms in bipolar patients is currently under discussion. Last years, different cases of antidepressant-induced mania and hypomania in patients with OCD have been described.

Several authors have reported that patients with OCD and bipolar disorder have more depressive episodes than patients with only OCD.

To know the relationship between OCD and other bipolar spectrum disorders.

Bibliographical review on comorbidity between obsessive symptoms and bipolarity.

Some longitudinal analysis have shown that patients firstly diagnosed with OCD have an increased risk for subsequent diagnosis of all other conditions, especially for bipolar and schizoaffective disorder, for those whose risk is of up to 13 times higher. The handling of a patient with bipolar disorder and OCD implies some difficulty, because of the main treatment of anxiety disorders, the antidepressants, alters the course of manic-depressive illness, accelerating cycles.

OCD is etiologically related to bipolar spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. Therefore, it is necessary to continue the investigation of possible involved genes and approaches for clinical practice.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.