Effect of Quetiapine on Brain Activity Patterns in Patients With Heightened Risk of Bipolar Disorder
Status:
Unknown status
Trial end date:
2018-05-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Bipolar disorder (BPD) is often misdiagnosed as unipolar depression. This leads to inadequate
treatment and can have negative impact on the course of the disease. There is now preliminary
evidence that patients with unipolar and bipolar depression as well as healthy individuals
with a heightened risk of BPD can be distinguished from each other based on their brain
activity patterns and functional connectivity during resting state.
However, the impact of pharmacological treatment on these functional brain measures have not
yet been clarified. For common antidepressants it has been shown that they seem to normalise
aberrant brain activity patterns and functional connectivity. The problem is that some
antidepressants can induce mania or accelerate pathological cycling in depressive patients
with unrecognised BPD. Therefore, pharmacological drugs with mood-stabilising properties such
as quetiapine are more and more prescribed. Although the effectiveness and tolerability have
been proven, the neuronal effects of these adjunctive treatments are not clear. The aim of
the study is thus to investigate the impact of quetiapine on measures of brain activity in
depressive patients with a heightened risk of BPD. Moreover, the investigators want to
examine whether the investigators can distinguish depressive patients with a heightened risk
of BPD from depressive patients without a heightened risk of BPD using neuroimaging
techniques, and whether these measures can predict the course of the disease.