Michele Fornaro, Annalisa Anastasia, Francesco Monaco, Stefano Novello, Andrea Fusco, Felice Iasevoli, Domenico De Berardis, Nicola Veronese, Marco Solmi, Andrea de Bartolomeis
Highlights
- Treatment-emergent mania (TEM) has been reported inconsistently among Bipolar Disorder (BD) depressed patients receiving antidepressants.•
- TEM occurred in 38.46% of the assessed cases.•
- A typical antipsychotics (p = .005), lithium (≤ .001), cyclothymic/irritable/hyperthymic temperaments (p = ≤ .001; p = .001; p = .003, respectively), rapid-cycling (p = .005) and depressive mixed features (p = .003) differed between TEM+vs. TEM− patients upon descriptive statistics but not multivariate regression.
Background
Treatment-emergent affective switch (TEAS), including treatment-emergent mania (TEM), carry significant burden in the clinical management of bipolar depression, whereas the use of antidepressants raises both efficacy, safety and tolerability concerns. The present study assesses the prevalence and clinical correlates of TEM in selected sample of Bipolar Disorder (BD) Type-II (BD-II) acute depressionoutpatients.
Methods
Post-hoc analysis of the clinical and psychopathological features associated with TEM among 91 BD-II depressed outpatients exposed to antidepressants.
Results
Second-generation antipsychotics (SGA) (p = .005), lithium (≤ .001), cyclothymic/irritable/hyperthymic temperaments (p = ≤ .001; p = .001; p = .003, respectively), rapid-cycling (p = .005) and depressive mixed features (p = .003) differed between TEM+ cases vs. TEM− controls. Upon multinomial logistic regression, the accounted psychopathological features correctly classified as much as 88.6% of TEM+ cases (35/91 overall sample, or 38.46% of the sample), yet not statistically significantly [Exp(B) = .032; p = ns]. Specifically, lithium [B = − 2.385; p = .001], SGAs [B = − 2.354; p = .002] predicted lower rates of TEM+ in contrast to the number of lifetime previous psychiatric hospitalizations [B = 2.380; p = .002], whereas mixed features did not [B = 1.267; p = ns].
Limitations
Post-hoc analysis. Lack of systematic pharmacological history record; chance of recall bias and Berkson’s biases. Permissive operational criterion for TEM. Relatively small sample size.
Conclusions
Cyclothymic temperament and mixed depression discriminated TEM+between TEM− cases, although only lithium and the SGAs reliably predicted TEM+/− grouping. Larger-sampled/powered longitudinal replication studies are warranted to allow firm conclusions on the matter, ideally contributing to the identification of clear-cut sub-phenotypes of BD towards patient-tailored-pharmacotherapy.