New research identifies the Clock gene involvement in mania. Mice without the gene exhibited mania-like behaviour. Up to now there has been no animal model of bipolar disorder. This remarkable research points to the biological clock’s role in bipolar; for over half a century scientists have studied connections and this is a step forward.

“There’s evidence suggesting that circadian genes may be involved in bipolar disorder,” said Dr. Colleen McClung, assistant professor of psychiatry and the study’s senior author. “What we’ve done is taken earlier findings a step further by engineering a mutant mouse model displaying an overall profile that is strikingly similar to human mania, which will give us the opportunity to study why people develop mania or bipolar disorder and how they can be treated.”

Right now, there are treatments that don’t require medication at all that can be useful. In her review Circadian Rhythms Factor in Rapid-Cycling Bipolar Disorder, Ellen Leibenluft concludes:

Thus, even if circadian abnormalities are neither the sole nor the primary cause of bipolar illness, it is possible that circadian interventions can have therapeutic utility. Compared to psychotropic medications, circadian interventions are relatively flexible therapeutic modalities; they have a rapid onset and offset of action, and their clinical effects may be altered by changing the time that they are administered.

Lithium, Circadian Clocks and Bipolar Disorder is a great info-packed post about chronobiology and bipolar disorders, by Bora of A Blog Around the Clock.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Mar 2007
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.