Lithium Increases Hippocampal Volume
There is some evidence that lithium can affect brain structure, particularly the size of various parts of the brain. A study by Hajek et al. presented at the 2013 meeting of the International Society of Bipolar Disorders examined patients with bipolar disorder who had either received lithium for at least two years (37 patients) or had received under three months of treatment with lithium (19 patients), and compared the size of the hippocampus in these two groups and one control group (50 people). The patients with bipolar disorder all had the disorder for at least 10 years (25 years on average) and had had a minimum of five episodes.
Those treated with lithium long-term had greater hippocampal volume than the non-lithium patients (despite having spent more time in episodes of illness), and equal volume to healthy controls. Measurements were collected via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and analyses were done two different ways to avoid being confounded by the changes lithium may have on water balance in the brain, a phenomenon that was recently found to affect MRI images.
Editor’s Note: These data add to the large number of studies in animals and humans indicating that lithium, in addition to preventing episodes and suicides, may have neurotrophic and neuroprotective effects.
