Neurobiological, neurocognitive and neurodevelopmental features of undiagnosed, early stage and unmedicated bipolar disorders: A comparative study

Aim: The aim of this project is to discribe the effects of the illness at early stage by comparing undiagnosed and unmedicated bipolar disorder patients with the healthy controls and chronic patients according to their neurobiological, neurocognitive and neurodevelopmental features. Subject: It is known that bipolar disorder negatively effects cognitive functions of patients by causing structural and functional changes in some brain regions. But the etiological roles of these biological markers is not clear. Method: At the project undiagnosed and unmedicated patients with bipolar disorder, chronic patients and healthy controls were assessed with neurocognitive tests and brain magnetic resonance imaging. And also their oxidative stress marker levels were measured Results: Verbal learning, attention, working memory and executive functions are significantly worse in the two bipolar disorder patient groups than the healthy control group and the worst performance is belong to the chronic patient group. Levels of catalase enzym are significantly higher in the two bipolar disorder patient groups than the healthy control group (p<0,05) and levels of SOD enzym are significantly higher in the chronic patients than the newly diagnosed bipolar disorder patients (p<0,0001). Differences in some prefontal, temporal, parietal and limbic regions were determined in cranial MRI analysis. Conclusion: Neurobiological differences and neurocognitive dysfunctions are occur since the early satges of the bipolar disorder and they have progressive courses.