Evidence suggests continuity between adult and paediatric bipolar disorder

Demonstrated deficits in social cognition and motor flexibility in children with bipolar disorder provide evidence of continuity between paediatric and adult bipolar disorder say researchers.Although research has begun to identify a neuropsychological and social-cognitive profile for adult bipolar disorder, less is known about the paediatric form of the disease.Researchers in the US conducted a study to test the hypothesis that children with bipolar disorder would perform more poorly than control subjects on social-cognitive, inhibition and response flexibility tasks.In addition, the researchers aimed to investigate the effects of current mood state and co-morbid attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on patients' performance.The study included 40 children with narrow phenotype paediatric bipolar disorder and 22 diagnosis-free comparison subjects.Most children with bipolar disorder (83%) had at least one co-morbid disorder, generally an anxiety disorder, ADHD or oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Subjects completed measures to test social cognition, inhibition and response flexibility and motor inhibition during outpatient visits. Patients' mood state was assessed at the time of each task.Children with bipolar disorder scored significantly lower than controls on measures of social cognition, including the pragmatic judgement sub-test of the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (pPost hoc analyses showed that both euthymic and symptomatic bipolar disorder patients performed more poorly than controls on all three measuresStop and stop-change tasks were used to assess inhibition and response flexibility. Children with bipolar disorder had a significantly longer change signal reaction time than controls, suggesting a deficit in response flexibility.None of the differences between the groups could be attributed to the presence of co-morbid ADHD.The researchers state that their results indicate deficits in social cognition and motor flexibility in patients with narrow-phenotype paediatric bipolar disorder.They add that further research is needed to clarify the social cognitive deficits in adults and children with bipolar disorder and their continuity across development.The researchers conclude that their findings lay the groundwork for neurocognitive research aimed at elucidating neural mediators of these social-cognitive and response-flexibility deficits in bipolar disorder.Reference...