Role of altered telomere dynamics in severe psychiatric disorders and in response to mood stabilizers

• Κύριος συγγραφέας: Μποσγανάς, Παναγιώτης
• Άλλοι συγγραφείς: Bosganas, Panagiotis
• Γλώσσα: English
• Έκδοση: 2022
• Θέματα: Bipolar patients; Bipolar disorder; Lithium; Telomere length; Διπολικοί ασθενείς; Διπολική διαταραχή; Λίθιο

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a mood disorder that manifests itself through manic and depressive episodes. About 1-2 percent of the population is affected by the disease. It's been proposed that bipolar disorder (BD) is linked to accelerated aging and cell senescence. Lithium is the mainstay treatment as a mood stabilizer in BD, both as an acute treatment for mania and as a prophylactic intervention. Despite the fact that 30% of patients experience complete symptom remission with chronic treatment, a large proportion of individuals do not respond well. In addition, it is widely known that lithium is a drug that has a narrow therapeutic range and a wide range of mild to severe side effects. The patient response to lithium appears to have a strong hereditary basis, and lithium responders appear to have a more uniform disease manifestation. Individuals with psychiatric diseases, and in particular those with BD, have a lower life expectancy than people in the general population. This is primarily caused by three factors: an increase in the prevalence of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, as well as an increase in the risk of a suicide attempt. Elderly people are more likely to develop cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and these pathologies are additionally characterized by a persistent inflammatory state, a trait often present in psychiatric disorders. As a result, we realize that there is an accelerating aging of the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders which is indicated by the increased incidence of age-related disorders. This conclusion is molecularly supported by modified cell aging markers, including reduced telomere length. Because of its relationship with memory function and hippocampus shape, telomere length variation is currently considered a promising biomarker of susceptibility to neuropsychiatric diseases. While the evidence supporting shorter telomeres in BD is conflicting, a recent study found that long-term lithium medication is linked to longer telomeres in the disease. In our study, we tried to compare telomere length (TL) between patients treated with BD and healthy controls (HR) and also to explore if telomere length (TL) differed in clinical responders and non-responders to lithium (LiRs, non-LiRs). This is the first study exploring if TL differs in cell lines (LCLs) derived from BD patients with different clinical response to Lithium. Our findings confirm our previous studies showing that TL does not differ between R and non-R in lithium. In addition, we suggest that 7 days of treatment may not be enough to measure any effect of lithium on TL. Thus, not necessarily excluding, this could take place should the treatment be longer, as in the clinical setting