Aims and structure of the German Research Consortium BipoLife for the study of bipolar disorder

TY - JOUR

T1 - Aims and structure of the German Research Consortium BipoLife for the study of bipolar disorder

AU - Ritter, Philipp S

AU - Bermpohl, Felix

AU - Gruber, Oliver

AU - Hautzinger, Martin

AU - Jansen, Andreas

AU - Juckel, Georg

AU - Kircher, Tilo

AU - Lambert, Martin

AU - Mulert, Christoph

AU - Pfennig, Andrea

AU - Reif, Andreas

AU - Rienhoff, Otto

AU - Schulze, Thomas G

AU - Severus, Emanuel

AU - Stamm, Thomas

AU - Bauer, Michael

PY - 2016/12

Y1 - 2016/12

N2 - BACKGROUND: Bipolar disorder is a severe and heterogeneous mental disorder. Despite great advances in neuroscience over the past decades, the precise causative mechanisms at the transmitter, cellular or network level have so far not been unraveled. As a result, individual treatment decisions cannot be tailor-made and the uncertain prognosis is based on clinical characteristics alone. Although a subpopulation of patients have an excellent response to pharmacological monotherapy, other subpopulations have been less well served by the medical system and therefore require more focused attention. In particular individuals at high risk of bipolar disorder, young patients in the early stages of bipolar disorder, patients with an unstable highly relapsing course and patients with acute suicidal ideation have been identified as those in need.STRUCTURE: A research consortium of ten universities across Germany has therefore implemented a 4 year research agenda including three randomized controlled trials, one epidemiological trial and one cross-sectional trial to address these areas of unmet needs. The topics under investigation will be the improvement of early recognition, specific psychotherapy, and smartphones as an aid for early episode detection and biomarkers of lithium response. A subset of patients will be investigated utilizing neuroimaging (fMRI), neurophysiology (EEG), and biomaterials (genomics, transcriptomics).CONCLUSIONS: This article aims to outline the rationale, design, and methods of these individual studies.

AB - BACKGROUND: Bipolar disorder is a severe and heterogeneous mental disorder. Despite great advances in neuroscience over the past decades, the precise causative mechanisms at the transmitter, cellular or network level have so far not been unraveled. As a result, individual treatment decisions cannot be tailor-made and the uncertain prognosis is based on clinical characteristics alone. Although a subpopulation of patients have an excellent response to pharmacological monotherapy, other subpopulations have been less well served by the medical system and therefore require more focused attention. In particular individuals at high risk of bipolar disorder, young patients in the early stages of bipolar disorder, patients with an unstable highly relapsing course and patients with acute suicidal ideation have been identified as those in need.STRUCTURE: A research consortium of ten universities across Germany has therefore implemented a 4 year research agenda including three randomized controlled trials, one epidemiological trial and one cross-sectional trial to address these areas of unmet needs. The topics under investigation will be the improvement of early recognition, specific psychotherapy, and smartphones as an aid for early episode detection and biomarkers of lithium response. A subset of patients will be investigated utilizing neuroimaging (fMRI), neurophysiology (EEG), and biomaterials (genomics, transcriptomics).CONCLUSIONS: This article aims to outline the rationale, design, and methods of these individual studies.

U2 - 10.1186/s40345-016-0066-0

DO - 10.1186/s40345-016-0066-0

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 27873290

VL - 4

SP - 26

JO - INT J BIPOLAR DISORD

JF - INT J BIPOLAR DISORD

SN - 2194-7511

IS - 1

ER -