Bipolar Disorder and Its Comorbidities in Youth
A symposium on bipolar disorder and its comorbidities in children and adolescents was held at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2011. The following findings were reported there.
ADHD
Researcher Janet Wozniak discussed the relationship of bipolar illness and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Based on interviews of family members of children with bipolar illness alone, bipolar illness plus ADHD, ADHD alone, and controls, she concluded that bipolar illness occurred more often in families of children with bipolar illness with or without ADHD. Similarly, she showed that there was more ADHD in relatives of children with either ADHD alone or ADHD comorbid with bipolar illness. She concluded that the comorbidity of bipolar illness and ADHD is a unique subtype of bipolar disorder and requires further study.
Emotional Dysregulation and Substance Abuse
In another presentation, Tim Wilens indicated that those with bipolar disorder and emotional dysregulation had an 8- to 20-fold increased risk of having a substance abuse comorbidity with their bipolar disorder.
Substance Abuse Comorbidity
In a third presentation, Ben Goldstein reported that the onset of bipolar illness predates the onset of substance abuse in 60 to 83% of instances of comorbid illness. He emphasized the dramatic negative impact of comorbid substance use in children with bipolar disorder in terms of increasing legal entanglements, pregnancy, academic failure, suicide, and decreased compliance with medications. He reported that in the multi-site, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded Course and Outcome of Bipolar Illness in Youth (COBY) study, the largest longitudinal study to date of youth with bipolar disorder, the risk of new onset substance abuse over the course of 4 years of follow-up was 32%. These data taken with the 15% of children who already had substance abuse at intake indicates that in this study approximately half of the children with bipolar illness had or acquired a substance abuse problem near the beginning of their illness. Two-thirds of the children in the study had abused both alcohol and cannabis. Read more
Treatment Plans for Maladaptive Impulsive Aggression in Children
Maladaptive impulsive aggression often co-occurs with other psychiatric illnesses in children, so it can be difficult to find treatment solutions. A symposium at the 57th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry yielded some suggestions. Read on for an overview of impulsive aggression and possible treatment plans.
At the symposium, held in New York Oct. 26-31, 2010, panelists called maladaptive aggression the “fever” of child psychiatry (because it is common but also nonspecific) and described the phenomenon as “the language of the inarticulate.” The panelists drew a distinction between impulsive aggression, which describes behavior that is unplanned, unprofitable, and poorly controlled, and another phenomenon, predatory aggression, which describes behavior that is planned, sometimes profitable, and highly controlled.
The speakers on the panel indicated that impulsive aggression is related to other psychiatric syndromes including depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), mania, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), borderline personality disorder, autism, and schizophrenia. This raises problems for drug development, as Tom Laughren of the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) indicated in one talk at the symposium, because when new treatments are developed, they are studied in the context of only one primary disorder. Read more
The Natural Substance Citicoline May Be Useful in Bipolar Disorder with Comorbid Stimulant Abuse
Sherwood Brown and colleagues from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have completed a successful placebo-controlled trial of citicoline for bipolar and unipolar depression with comorbid methamphetamine dependence. Forty-eight participants with methamphetamine dependence and either unipolar or bipolar depression were randomized to either citicoline (2000 mg/day) or placebo for 12 weeks. Those receiving citicoline had significantly greater improvement in scores on the Inventory of Depressive Symptoms compared with those who received placebo, and patients receiving citicoline stayed in the study significantly longer, with completion rates of 41% on citicoline and 15% on placebo.
In 2007, the same team of investigators reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology that citicoline had positive effects in bipolar patients with cocaine dependence, who experienced significant decreases in cocaine use and fewer cocaine-positive urine tests while taking citicoline.
Citicoline
Bipolar Disorder Worse in US than Europe
New research shows that there are more early onsets of illness and more difficult courses of bipolar illness in the US than in the Netherlands or Germany.
This editor was invited to give a plenary presentation at the 4th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders in Sao Paulo, Brazil in March. The talk, titled “A greater incidence of early onset bipolar illness and poor prognosis factors in patients in the US compared with those in The Netherlands and Germany,” was based on studies in our Bipolar Collaborative Network.
We found that patients who were studied and treated at four sites in the US (Los Angeles, Dallas, Cincinnati, and Bethesda) had more poor-prognosis factors and indices of difficult courses of bipolar illness compared with patients studied in the same fashion at three sites in Utrecht, the Netherlands and Freiberg and Munich, Germany. We presented some of these data in a preliminary report in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2008 and further analyzed these data for an article published last year in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Read more
Preventing Recurrent Mood Episodes
Psychotherapy and psychoeducational approaches, long-term psychopharmacology, and combination therapy all play a role in preventing recurrent mood episodes.
Psychotherapeutic and Psychoeducational Approaches Are Critical
A number of studies presented at the 4th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders in Sao Paulo, Brazil in March indicated that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and individual and group psychoeducational approaches enhance both short- and long-term outcomes for patients with bipolar illness. These studies add to an already substantial literature that shows that focused psychotherapies (such as cognitive/behavioral, interpersonal, and social rhythms therapies) and psychoeducation are superior to treatment as usual.
These therapies can provide a variety of approaches to stress management and reduction, and can enhance family and interpersonal communication. Another way these focused psychotherapeutic approaches help patients is by demonstrating the benefits of effective long-term preventive treatment and encouraging its consistent use.
Without consistent prophylactic treatment, patients are at high risk for recurrences and their subsequent psychosocial and neurobiological consequences. Greater number of prior episodes is associated with an increased risk of psychosocial dysfunction, treatment resistance, cognitive dysfunction, medical comorbidities, and even dementia in old age.
After the jump: preventive psychopharmacology and combination therapy. Read more
Anticonvulsant Zonisamide (Zonegran) May Treat Alcohol Abuse
Albert Arias and collaborators from the University of Connecticut Health Center presented a study of zonisamide in which the drug provided significant benefits over placebo in patients with primary alcoholism (i.e., not with comorbid bipolar illness). Treatments began at 100 mg/day and increased to a maximum of 500 mg/day.
EDITOR’S NOTE: If replicated, this study would place zonisamide in a category with topiramate (Topamax), which has also been shown to decrease alcohol intake and craving. Both drugs also share the ability to cause minor weight loss as a potentially positive side effect, and both drugs have also proven effective in double-blind studies in the treatment of bulimia.
However, four double-blind, placebo-controlled studies found that topiramate did not have acute antimanic efficacy. Zonisamide has not been studied in a systematic fashion, but open studies suggest its potential utility in mania and, to a lesser degree, in depression.
Since zonisamide may have positive effects on mood in patients with bipolar disorder, and there is now placebo-controlled documentation of its efficacy in primary alcohol abuse disorders, its ultimate potential utility in patients with bipolar disorder and comorbid alcoholism deserves consideration.
