The beneficial effect of lithium in the treatment of people suffering from bipolar disorder is to increase the volume of gray matter in the brain, according to the researchers in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
Another beneficial effect of this element is reducing the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and the development of dementia. According to the researchers, understanding the mechanism of action of lithium may lead to the use of this element in the treatment of other diseases of the nervous system.
Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive disorder, is a mental illness characterized by cyclical, alternating episodes of depression and mania (i.e. over-excitement) and a state of apparent mental health.
In Kyoon Lyoo of Seoul National University, Stephen Dager, Perry Renshaw and colleagues studied 22 patients with bipolar disorder who had never taken any antipsychotic or mood stabilizing medications and gave them either lithium or valproic acid. The researchers then took pictures of the brains of the test subjects and observed a significant increase in the volume of gray matter (made up by the bodies of nerve cells) only in patients treated with lithium.
The increased brain gray matter volume was maintained for more than 16 weeks of treatment, and was accompanied by an improvement in the symptoms of the disease and an improvement in the health of the patients. According to the authors of the study, such results suggest that lithium causes regeneration of the gray matter, which allows to fill the deficiencies in the number of neurons typical for patients with bipolar disorder.
Interestingly, in patients treated with valproic acid, improvement in health was also observed, but it was not associated with an increase in the volume of gray matter, which indicates a different, although also effective, mechanism of the drug’s action. (PAP)