Bipolar Disorder in a female with CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder: A Case Report

CDKL5 deficiency disorder (CDD) is an early-onset developmental and epileptic encephalopathy. While a subset of individuals is believed to experience comorbid behavioral disorders, none have reported well-defined affective disorders. Though there is a documented association between epilepsy and mood disorders, they may go undetected in the CDD population due to difficulty assessing mood in the presence of severe/profound intellectual disability and disease-related sleep dysregulation. We aimed to identify the clinical characteristics of an individual with CDD who presented with a mood disorder falling outside this expected behavioral phenotype.

We identified one 22-year-old female with CDD diagnosed with unspecified bipolar disorder at 18 years of age. Family history was noncontributory. At diagnosis, she had fluctuations in mood, characterized by periods of elated affect, increased energy and vocalizations, hypertonia, and insomnia lasting 3-4 days alternating with periods of depressed affect, irritability, hypotonia, and excessive sleep lasting for up to one month. She had experienced frequent mood swings and sleep dysregulation from early childhood, and by early adulthood the duration of "up" and "down" periods fell in the range specified in the DSM-5 bipolar disorder criteria. Trazodone and suvorexant did not alleviate sleep related symptoms. Her epilepsy was well controlled on lamotrigine monotherapy since early childhood. Though lamotrigine treatment has had no psychiatric benefit despite its known mood stabilizing properties, aripiprazole has been effective in reducing severity and frequency of fluctuations between hypomania and depression.

While sleep and behavioral disorders fall within the expected phenotype for CDD, this is the first report of bipolar disorder. Careful attention to patterns of sleep and behavior that may indicate mood cycling in this population is required, particularly in the setting of limited communication and functional abilities.