INTRODUCTION Bipolar disorder is a relapsing-remitting condition affecting approximately 1-2% of the population. Even when the treatments available are effective, relapses are still very frequent. Therefore, the burden and cost associated to every new episode of the disorder have relevant implications in public health. The main objective of this study was to estimate the associated health resou...

OBJECTIVE We aimed to explore whether the prevalence of manic switch was underestimated in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) compared to observational studies (OSs). METHOD Meta-analyses and simple and systematic reviews were identified by two reviewers in a blinded, standardized manner. All relevant references were extracted to include RCTs and OSs that provided data about manic switch pre...

OBJECTIVE To determine if the repeated occurrence of manic episodes in bipolar I disorder (BD-I) patients is associated with reduced cognitive performance, which could in turn imply a worsening in the disorder's evolution. METHOD Cognitive performance in euthymic patients was assessed using attention, memory, and executive function tests on 24 BD-I patients who had experienced only 1 manic ep...

BACKGROUND Cannabis use is common in patients with bipolar disorder, however little is known about cannabis as a risk factor for mania. In order to investigate the association between exposure to cannabis and subsequent development of manic symptoms whilst controlling for psychotic symptoms, a longitudinal population-based study was carried out. METHODS 4815 individuals aged 18 to 64 years we...

BACKGROUND Mood disorders were found associated with fibromyalgia (FM) and clinical studies have revealed the efficacy of antidepressant drugs in the treatment of FM. However no specific instruments to identify manic symptoms were used. OBJECTIVES To assess the frequency of anxiety and mood disorders (particularly bipolar disorders and manic symptoms) in a consecutive sample of women affected...

OBJECTIVE To assess the long-term response to add-on quetiapine therapy in patients with bipolar I disorder who were not adequately responding to standard medications. METHODS Outpatients with bipolar I disorder (DSM-IV-TR) responding inadequately to standard treatment were observed before and after the addition of quetiapine. Symptom severity was evaluated using the Clinical Global Impressio...

Background: The identification of differences in seasonality and chronotype may provide useful information regarding unipolar mania as a distinct entity. Therefore, the present study was planned to compare seasonality and chronotype in patients with unipolar mania and bipolar disorder. Method: A cross-sectional study included 60 euthymic outpatients, 30 affected by bipolar affective disorder (b...

BACKGROUND Although (hypo)manic symptoms are common in adolescence, transition to adult bipolar disorder is infrequent. AIMS To examine whether the risk of transition to bipolar disorder is conditional on the extent of persistence of subthreshold affective phenotypes. METHOD In a 10-year prospective community cohort study of 3021 adolescents and young adults, the association between persist...

Many concepts have been introduced into the classification of depression, including manic-depressive/bipolar disorder depression, etc. Kraepelin's original concept of manic-depressive disorder has evolved into the concept of polarity, and bipolar and unipolar disorders. Psychiatric classification is characterized by an inflation of the diagnostic categories, including subtypes of depression. Th...

Research has demonstrated impairments in executive functions in Bipolar Mood Disorder patients. Evidence shows that this impairment is present in both periods of active symptoms of the disorder, as well as euthymic stages, and is compounded by mood episodes, especially manic phases. The purpose of this study was to compare the executive performance of a sample of Brazilian bipolar patients in d...