Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a condition of the brain that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. It can often show itself in a large group of ways. This is the reason why in most cases, this brain condition is often misdiagnosed, most commonly as depression.
However, researchers believe that they may be one stop closer in discovering a biological way to make sure the bipolar is diagnosed correctly. There have been new finding that appeared in Translational Psychiatry.
A team from the Mayo clinic found a set of proteins that can be considered as diagnostic markers for bipolar I disorder. In addition, if the discovery of these proteins can be approved through reproduction, then these markers may be able to help psychiatrists diagnose several mood disorders.
Mark Frye, the first author of the study and the head of psychiatry and psychology at Mayo Clinic released a statement saying the possibility of making a biological test available to help in correctly diagnosing bipolar disorder will be considered a hug success in the medical practice. It would also guide doctors to select the most suitable treatment for those individuals having a condition that is hard to diagnose.
Psychiatrists now are only depending on the symptoms they observe and the assessments of patients from the interview to diagnose them. The inadequate biological marker for mood disorders shows an absolute difference from other medical conditions like cancer, or heart attack which can be diagnosed well confidently.
Spotting the difference between mood disorders is crucial, considering treatments and medication for each patient is unique. Each patient gets a specific treatment depending on the mood disorder that they have, because some medications have dangerous or unpleasant effects on other mood disorders.
The new study assessed 272 different proteins from 288 patient blood samples. Among the participants, 46 were diagnosed with bipolar I depression with a history of mania, 29 wit bipolar II depression with a history of hypomania, and 53 with unipolar depression. They were then correlated to a controlled group of 141 people without mood disorder.
The researchers found out that there were 73 proteins which were different from what was studied in the group. However, the results showed a specific difference among 6 proteins for those people with bipolar I depression when compared with the controlled group.
