All relevant guidelines recommend monotherapy as the initial treatment for manic phases of bipolar disorder (BD), with combination therapy reserved for severe cases or as a subsequent choice. However, in routine practice, monotherapy is often not sufficiently effective for acute and/or maintenance therapy. As a consequence, most patients are given combination therapies. An extensive search conc...

OBJECTIVES Bipolar type II (BP II) disorder is thought to be distinct from BP I disorder on genetic and biological grounds, and it is not merely a milder form of the illness. It affects 1.5-2.5% of the US adult population, and is characterized by highly recurrent depressive episodes with a substantial morbidity from alcoholism and non-affective psychopathology, and a higher suicide rate than ei...

BACKGROUND Bipolar disorder (BD) and the anxiety disorders are highly comorbid. The present study sought to examine perfectionism and goal attainment values as potential mechanisms of known associations between anxiety, stress and BD symptomatology. Measures of perfectionism and goal attainment values were administered to 269 members of BD pedigrees, alongside measures of anxiety and stress, an...

OBJECTIVE Recent reports raise concern that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and some manic symptoms may worsen with stimulant treatment. This study examines the response to methylphenidate in such children. METHODS Data from children participating in the 1-month methylphenidate titration trial of the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD were reanalyze...

OBJECTIVES This study had the following objectives: 1) to estimate the 12-month prevalence of conventional and unconventional mental health service use by individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) or mania in the past year, and 2) to identify factors associated with the use of conventional mental health services by individuals with MDD or mania in the past year. METHODS We examined dat...

OBJECTIVE Bipolar disorder is associated with poor pain outcomes, but the extant literature has not taken into account how mania or hypomania - a central feature of bipolar disorders - influences pain intensity. The objective of this study was to describe whether patients recalled experiencing reduced pain intensity during manic or hypomanic episodes. DESIGN AND SETTING This study used a retr...

BACKGROUND Episode duration, recurrence rates, and time spent in manic and depressive phases of bipolar disorder (BD) is not well defined for subtypes of the disorder. METHODS We reviewed the course, timing, and duration of episodes of mania and depression among 1130 clinically treated DSM-IV-TR BD patients of various types, and compared duration and rates as well as total proportion of time ...

Notch signaling plays an essential role in development as well as cancer. We have previously shown that Notch3 is important for lung cancer growth and survival. Notch receptors are activated through the interaction with their ligands, resulting in proteolytic cleavage of the receptors. This interaction is modulated by Fringe, a family of fucose-specific β1,3 N-acetylglucosaminyltransferases tha...