MedWire News: Results from a Spanish study suggest that there are small but significant differences in short- and long-term outcomes between men and women who have suffered an acute episode of pure mania.
"Over the past few years, there has been increasing interest in the analysis of gender differences in bipolar disorder in order to improve diagnosis and treatment," explain Laia Miquel (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Catalonia) and team.
But they add that "to our knowledge, no previous studies have analyzed gender differences in pure mania."
The researchers therefore studied data from the European Mania in Bipolar Longitudinal Evaluation of Medication (EMBLEM) study on 1326 women and 1159 men with bipolar disorder who had experienced an acute episode of pure mania.
The participants' short- (12 weeks) and long-term (12 months) outcomes were assessed using data on mania improvement, worsening, recovery, and the occurrence of depressive episodes during these periods.
There were no significant gender differences in the severity of manic symptoms at baseline, but men had a higher frequency of substance abuse than women, the team notes in the Archives of Women's Mental Health.
Analysis revealed that women and men had similar outcomes at 12 weeks regarding mania improvement (82.1% vs 81.1%), mania worsening (18.1% vs 17.9%), and mania recovery (42.5% vs 42.3%).
However, at 12 months, significantly more women than men showed mania improvement, at 95.4% versus 89.2%, although mania worsening and recovery rates did not differ significantly, at 29.4% versus 28.8%, and 74.2% versus 72.1%, respectively.
The researchers also found that significantly more women than men suffered a depressive episode over the short- (14.9% vs 9.7%) and long-term (27.7% vs 21.5%).
Miquel and team conclude: "The results of the study show that women with pure mania tend to improve faster than men. Conversely, they have a higher risk of developing a depressive episode."
They add: "The clinical implications of these findings are that women may need shorter treatment duration when experiencing pure mania and they should be treated for their manic episode taking into account an increased risk of depressive recurrence during follow-up."
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