Hidding, Eva (2020) Increased prevalence of medical comorbidity in bipolar disorder patients; what are the most important contributing factors? thesis, Medicine.
Full text available on request.Abstract
Objective Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness with a high morbidity and mortality rate. Although a lot of research is done to try and understand the pathophysiology of BD and the link with comorbidity, there is no consistency about it yet. Scattered but convincing theories are written about this subject. We performed this research in order to gain more awareness for the link between psychiatry and somatic disorders and to get more insight in the pathophysiology of BD. Methods We performed an observational cross-sectional research to investigate the differences in prevalence of medical comorbidity in 1,383 subjects with BD and 266 healthy controls. In addition, we analysed the influence of a variety of covariates and pharmacological treatment on the prevalence of medical comorbidity. Results In Chi square analysis, thyroid disorders, migraine and skin disorders were significantly more prevalent in BD patients, although for all other medical comorbidities such a trend was also found. In multivariate logistic regression, significance fell away for thyroid disorders and migraine. We found that lithium had a protective effect on most comorbidities. Conclusion Our research resulted in confirming our hypothesis that medical comorbidity is more prevalent in BD. The most plausible theory to explain the most important results is as follows: thyroid disorders are more prevalent in BD patients due to lithium use, migraine due to higher BMI and skin disorders are associated with BD directly. Lithium has a possible protective effect on medical comorbidity since medical comorbidity is less prevalent in users. The effect of lithium is rather important and should be investigated further in follow-up studies.
| Item Type: | Thesis (UNSPECIFIED) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Chrispijn, Melissa |
| Faculty: | Medical Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 11 Oct 2023 11:14 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Oct 2023 11:14 |
| URI: | https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3705 |
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