A study found that metformin, the standard treatment for type 2 diabetes, was helpful in the treatment of bipolar disorder.
Manic depression is a mental disorder characterized by alternating mania, a state of elevated mood, and depression, a state of low mood.
That’s why the official name is bipolar disorder.
Metformin treats diabetes by reducing the liver’s glucose production and increasing the cells’ insulin sensitivity.
Cynthia Calkin, a psychiatrist and psychiatrist at the University of Dalhousie University in Canada, and her team have published a study showing that metformin may help treat bipolar disorder by improving insulin resistance in people with bipolar disorder. HealthDay News) reported on the 28th.
According to Dr. Claudia Valdasano, director of the bipolar outpatient clinic at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, more than 50% of people with bipolar disorder have insulin resistance.
The reason for this is that people with bipolar disorder are usually overweight or obese and have a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
According to the research team, this fact was found in a clinical trial conducted on 20 patients who had had bipolar disorder for more than 25 years.
In more than 90% of these patients, three out of four treatments were ineffective: the tranquilizer lithium, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, and antidepressants.
It was that severe.
The researchers randomly divided them into two halves, one group taking metformin and the other given a placebo.
As a result, in the metformin group, 50% of insulin resistance disappeared within 14 weeks, and the treatment effect was shown.
The metformin group significantly improved symptoms on a standard test used to assess the severity of bipolar disorder.
Although these results are very impressive, the team emphasized that large-scale clinical trials are needed to confirm the effectiveness.
Metformin was safe.
Metformin is a safe and inexpensive drug that has been used for more than 50 years, the researchers noted.
The researchers speculated that insulin resistance might be related to the blood-brain barrier.
The blood-brain barrier is a place where special cells and substances are densely packed on the walls of blood vessels and tightly tightened like a ‘zipper’. .
The blood-brain barrier was originally intended to protect the brain, but when insulin resistance occurs, the blood-brain barrier leaks, the research team said.
If the blood-brain barrier leaks, inflammatory molecules can enter the brain and cause brain dysfunction such as bipolar disorder, the team explained.
In addition, if the blood-brain barrier is broken, the effectiveness of drugs that directly treat bipolar disorder may decrease, the research team said.
The fact that there is a link between bipolar disorder and insulin resistance is a paradigm shift in psychiatry, the researchers say.
The research team explained that in addition to mental illness, the underlying mechanisms that are going on in the patient’s body should also be looked at because they are related.
The key is that metformin is not an antidepressant and restores a faulty underlying mechanism, namely insulin resistance, the researchers stressed.
The results of this study were published in the latest issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, a journal of the American Society for Clinical Psychopharmacology.
/yunhap news