Changed potassium levels in neurons may engender mood swings in bipolar disorder. People suffering from bipolar disorder encounter substantial shifts in mood, fluctuating between frequently enfeebling intervals of mania and depression.
While a third of people with bipolar disorder can be fruitfully cured with the drug lithium the predominant patients grapple to discover curable alternatives that work.
Recently an expansive contemporary allocated finding by Salk researchers discloses formerly unspecified particulars describing why certain neurons in bipolar patients fluctuate between overly or underly elevated. Salk researchers utilized exploratory and calculation procedures to explain how disparity in potassium and sodium currents in the brain cells of the people with bipolar disorder may assist to additionally elucidate why some patients answer to lithium and others do not.
Salk professor Rust Gage said that this is a stimulating advancement towards comprehending cellular mechanisms that engender bipolar disorder. It also leads us one step nearer to being able to advance contemporary restorative to cure the illness.
In 2015 Gage and teammates found initially the elemental dissimilarity amidst brain cells of patients who answer to lithium and those who do not. In both cases, neurons from the brain’s dentate gyrus area were extremely excitable which is more doubtlessly energizing as juxtaposed to DG neurons from people without bipolar disorder. However, when susceptible to lithium only the cells from the familiar lithium responders were pacified by the drug.
