Changes in the corpus callosum in women with late-stage bipolar disorder

Abstract

Objective The present study investigated the differences in corpus callosum (CC) volumes between women with early stage and late stage bipolar I (BP I) disorder using the criteria previously described in the literature. Method We compared women with early and late stage BP I using criteria described in the Staging Systems Task Force Report of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders. We included 20 patients with early stage and 21 patients with late stage BP Iand a group of 25 healthy controls. Patients and controls underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging. Information on the clinical features of bipolar disorder was collected using a standardized questionnaire. Anatomical volumes of 5 regions of CC were compared between the three groups. Results Women with late-stage BP I disorder had reduced posterior CC volumes compared to early stage bipolar I patients and controls (F=6.05; P=0.004). The difference was significant after controlling for age, comorbidity with post-traumatic stress disorder, psychotic symptoms during mood episodes, and current use of medication. Conclusion The posterior CC was significantly decreased in volume in women with late-stage bipolar disorder. These findings suggest that CC may be an anatomical target of neuroprogression in the course of bipolar disorder in women.

Hippocampal volume and verbal memory performance in late-stage bipolar disorder

“…Therefore, we classified subjects as “BD-Late” if they had 10 or more manic episodes and 1 or more hospitalizations due to manic or depressive episodes. Similar definitions were used in previous studies (Magalhães et al, 2012; Lavagnino et al, 2015). We classified subjects as “BD-Early” when subjects had 3 or less manic episodes.…”

“…There is evidence of overall brain atrophy in bipolar patients with multiple-episodes and a cross-sectional study showed that lateral ventricles were significantly larger in bipolar patients with multiple-episodes as compared to first-episode patients or healthy controls (Strakowski et al, 2002). Also, a recent study showed decreased volume of corpus callosum in BD women with more than 10 episodes and at least one psychiatric hospitalization (Lavagnino et al, 2015). …”

Reduced hippocampus volume and memory performance in bipolar disorder patients carrying the BDNF val66met met allele

“…BD has long been sought to be associated with a number of neuroanatomical changes in the fronto-limbic regions, hippocampus, basal ganglia and corpus callosum (Chepenik et al, 2009b; Lavagnino et al, 2015; Radaelli et al, 2015; Selek et al, 2013). Notably, the hippocampus - a brain region widely acknowledged for its role in declarative memory (Eldridge et al, 2000) and emotion processing (Houenou et al, 2011) - has been reported to be either reduced (Bearden et al, 2008; Blumberg et al, 2003a; Chepenik et al, 2009b; Hartberg et al, 2011), enlarged (Beyer et al, 2004; Javadapour et al, 2010; van Erp et al, 2012) or unchanged (Altshuler et al, 2000; Bertolino et al, 2003; Brambilla et al, 2003; Chen et al, 2004; Delaloye et al, 2009) compared to healthy controls (HC).…”

612. Hippocampal Subfield Volumes in Mood Disorders

“…Based on several studies on the neuroprogression of bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder, the number of episodes was consistent with several aspects of the disorder, such as the brain atrophy and the general functioning. 23,[42][43][44][45][46] The partial correlations were performed between the hippocampal subfield volumes and the illness duration, as well as the numbers of manic, hypomanic, mixed and depressive episodes for BD-I, BD-II, and MDD controlling for age, gender, and ICV. Because a significant portion of patients reported more than 30 mood episodes, we considered the numbers of episodes as ordinal variables instead of scale variables in the correlation analysis.…”