Serum and red cell folate and affective morbidity in lithium prophylaxis

Abstract

Serum and red cell folate concentrations were estimated in 68 affective disorder patients taking lithium prophylactically, 65 of whom had bipolar disorder. The number of hospital admissions, the frequency of use of additional mood altering treatments and the Affective Morbidity Index were calculated for the 2 years of the study. Contrary to other findings, there were no differences between the folate concentrations for different severities of affective morbidity. These results question the rationale of prescribing folic acid preparations for lithium-treated bipolar disorder patients, but the authors indicate that folate concentrations may be low in lithium-treated unipolar depressives.

Nutrient-Based Therapies for Bipolar Disorder: A Systematic Review

“…Folate, with vitamins B 12 and B 6 as catalyzing cofactors, influences cognitive performance and mood [82,83,84,85,86]. Several reports indicate a high prevalence of folic acid deficiency among patients suffering from psychiatric conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder and cognitive dysfunction disorders [83,87,88,89,90].…”

Homocysteine as a peripheral biomarker in bipolar disorder: A meta-analysis

“…Of those, we excluded 2540 on the basis of title and abstract. We went through 57 full-text articles of which: two were excluded because they were duplicates of included studies with overlapping samples [61,62]; eighteen studies were excluded because they lacked a control group [38,46,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78]; twelve were excluded because they were not performed in subjects with a diagnosis of BD [41,[79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89]; twelve were excluded because they did not measure Hcy levels [90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101]; and two were excluded because they presented mixed data on BD and other psychiatric disorders [102,103]. The authors of a study that analysed together the total me...…”

Folic acid efficacy as an alternative drug added to sodium valproate in the treatment of acute phase of mania in bipolar disorder: a double‐blind randomized controlled trial

“…(40), McKeon et al. (12) and Coppen and Bolander‐Gouaille (38) reported more folate deficiency in unipolar depressive patients compared with that in patients with bipolar disorder. In contrast to all previous studies, the current study is the first trial showing a significant effect of folic acid in the improvement of manic patients treated with sodium valproate.…”

“…These vitamins are of particular interest because of the high prevalence of mild to moderate subclinical deficiencies (9, 10). Research to date indicates some interlinked neurochemical mechanisms by which folate, with vitamins B12 and B6 as catalyzing co‐factors, influences cognitive performance and mood (7, 11–14).…”