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Published on: December 18, 2016
Prospective study of bipolar disorder and neurodegenerative diseases
Xinming Xu1, Yaqi Li1, Hanyu Lu1
1Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, School of Public Health, Institute of Nutrition, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200030, China.
Abstract:
Bipolar disorder (BD) is linked to an increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Parkinson disease (PD), yet several uncertainties still remain and the extent to which the associations could be explained by BD-related medications (antipsychotics, lithium, and antiepileptics) was unknown. This study included 501,233 UK Biobank participants (mean [standard deviation] age, 56.5 [8.10] years; 54.4% women), free of dementia and PD at baseline. After a median 13.8 year follow-up, 9422 cases of dementia and 3457 PD cases were identified. Participants with BD had a significantly higher risk of dementia (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 2.52, 95% CI 2.00-3.19) and PD (adjusted HR 2.88, 95% CI 2.03-4.08). Findings suggest that up to two-thirds of the association of neurodegenerative diseases with BD may be mediated by BD-related medications. Further research is needed to confirm these findings and explore the underlying mechanisms.
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