The purpose of this study was to get new data about the physique (somatotype) of manic-depressive patients. The somatotypes of manic-depressive females (n = 31, mean age: 30 year) investigated show a balanced mesomorphic-endomorphic predominance. The mean somatotype was 6.34, 5.27, 1.39. Previous Hungarian studies showed a meso-endomorphic somatotype in manic-depressive females. The physique of...

Despite its obvious importance in mood disorders, characterization of emotional reactivity has been neglected in bipolar disorders. Concerning manic states and the current classification, the main criterion is the presence of an elevated or expansive mood. In contrast to this characteristic and often prolonged mood state, emotional reactivity refers to a brief evoked response to salient emotion...

BACKGROUND Although manic episodes in older adults are not rare, little published data exist on late-life manic episodes. Resistance to treatment and concomitant neurological lesions are frequent correlates of elderly mania. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of hospitalizations due to mania in patients older than 64 years through a period of 5 years in an Italian public ps...

Noradrenergic and GABA systems may be involved in mania, but there is little information about relationships between the function of these systems and response to specific antimanic treatments. We investigated relationships between indices of catecholamine or GABA system function, pretreatment mania severity and antimanic response to divalproex, lithium, or placebo. Plasma GABA and urinary excr...

The hypothesis is presented that the etiology of schizophrenia is neurodevelopmental: schizophrenia is a disorder occurring in extremely late maturers, whereas manic-depressive psychosis affects early maturers. This hypothesis is related to recent neurobiological findings and also to the following epidemiological and demographic topics covered by the author in her review of social class, marria...

OBJECTIVE We aimed to explore whether the prevalence of manic switch was underestimated in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) compared to observational studies (OSs). METHOD Meta-analyses and simple and systematic reviews were identified by two reviewers in a blinded, standardized manner. All relevant references were extracted to include RCTs and OSs that provided data about manic switch pre...

OBJECTIVE To determine if the repeated occurrence of manic episodes in bipolar I disorder (BD-I) patients is associated with reduced cognitive performance, which could in turn imply a worsening in the disorder's evolution. METHOD Cognitive performance in euthymic patients was assessed using attention, memory, and executive function tests on 24 BD-I patients who had experienced only 1 manic ep...

Manic depressive illness (bipolar disorder) is the mood disorder classically considered to have a strong biological basis. During manic depressive cycles, patients show dramatic fluctuations of mood, energy, activity, information processing, and behaviors. Theories of brain function and mood disorders must deal with the case of bipolar disorder, not simply unipolar depression. Shifts in the nos...

The pathophysiology of bipolar disorder, especially the underlying mechanisms of the bipolarity between manic and depressive states, has yet to be clarified. Microglia, immune cells in the brain, play important roles in the process of brain inflammation, and recent positron emission tomography studies have indicated microglial overactivation in the brain of patients with bipolar disorder. We ha...