Lithium Superior to Valproate at Preventing Manias and Depressions
In a special symposium on bipolar disorder at the 2014 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, researcher Mike Bauer reviewed a new meta-analysis that showed lithium not only has significant effects in preventing manias, but also depressions. Researcher Geddes et al. had, in a previous study called BALANCE, found that lithium was superior to valproate (Depakote). Together these findings led Bauer to the conclusion that lithium is under-used in the treatment of bipolar disorder, especially in the US, where lithium is prescribed less often than valproate.
An article by researcher Kessing in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2012 relied on naturalistic follow up data and also showed that lithium was superior to valproate in preventing hospitalizations.
A study by researcher Willem Nolen indicated that in mono-therapy, levels of lithium in the blood needed to be 0.6 meq/L or higher in order for lithium to work better than placebo. Lithium augmentation that produced lower blood levels of 0.3 meq/L was not significant on its main outcome measure of preventing new episodes. However, compared to treatment as usual, those randomized to lithium used lower doses of atypical antipsychotics, and other data indicated that these patients had fewer suicide attempts and increased hippocampal volume.
Bauer noted that lithium-related goiter and low thyroid are easily treated, and that kidney damage while taking lithium can be prevented by avoiding episodes of lithium intoxication. It is easy to conclude that lithium should be used more often, especially given its positive effects against suicide and brain gray matter and hippocampal volume loss.