bipolar disorder

New app may detect mood swings associated with bipolar disorder

New app may detect mood swings associated with bipolar disorder

A new mobile phone app is being developed that may help mental health professionals detect very early signs of depression or mania – the opposite extremes of bipolar disorder.

The app, created and under investigation by a team at the University of Michigan, monitors speech patterns as people use their cell phones. By using computer programs to assess the tone and rate of the speech, along with other variables, the researchers say they have encouraging findings that the app can identify very early signs of a depressive episode or a manic episode.

The University of Michigan team calls their research project PRIORI, as they hope that this marriage of mental health assessment and technology can yield early detection of recurrent episodes of bipolar disorder, even before it would be obvious to the individual or a clinician. Slowed speech, lower tone of speech, or hesitating speech on phone calls could precede a person becoming depressed, complaining of low energy or low mood. And speaking quickly, with lots of inflection or exclamations, could precede someone displaying the full euphoria, sleeplessness and uninhibited behaviors that can be associated with mania.

The researchers point out that privacy is maintained for those using the app, because the content of their conversations is encrypted. But, obviously, privacy remains an issue, because anyone with access to data from the app would know whether the person being monitored might be getting depressed or manic. And the app or another like it could yield data to detect anxiety.

Hence, third parties could potentially install this app, or another, on mobile phones (with or without the knowledge of the owners of the phones) and potentially determine if those individuals are mentally well or not. Needless to say, the government could use such an app, to note whether an individual or many individuals are showing mood volatility that might be associated with a pending protest or a strike, for example.

Most of us are not keen on having our mental health monitored by anyone other than ourselves or our medical professionals. This app, misdirected, could pose just such a risk.

Still, for all the caution, the promise of PRIORI is that it might help people who choose to use it and, perhaps, choose to send the data to their doctors. This could help medical professionals jump on the earliest signs of bipolar disorder, which affects over 5 million Americans and costs hundreds of thousands of lives per year.

Source: fox news

Stem Cell Research Offers Hope to Bipolar Patients

Brain cells of patients with bipolar disorder act differently than those of people without the mental illness, according to scientists who conducted a stem cell study of the condition.

The investigators said their research might one day lead to a better understanding of bipolar disorder and new treatments for the disease, which causes extreme emotional highs and lows.

About 200 million people worldwide have bipolar disorder. “We’re very excited about these findings. But we’re only just beginning to understand what we can do with these cells to help answer the many unanswered questions in bipolar disorder’s origins and treatment,” said study co-leader

Dr. Melvin McInnis, a professor of bipolar disorder and depression at the University of Michigan Medical School. The study authors took skin stem cells from people with and without bipolar disorder and transformed them into neurons similar to brain cells. It’s the first time that stem cell lines specific to bipolar disorder have been created, the researchers said.

They discovered distinct differences in how the two sets of neurons behave and communicate with each other. The cells also differed in their response to lithium, the most widely used treatment for bipolar disorder.

The study was published online March 25 in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

“This gives us a model that we can use to examine how cells behave as they develop into neurons,” study co-leader Sue O’Shea, a professor in the department of cell and developmental biology and director of the University of
Michigan Pluripotent Stem Cell Research Lab, said in a university news release.

“Already, we see that cells from people with bipolar disorder are different in how often they express certain genes, how they differentiate into neurons, how they communicate, and how they respond to lithium,” O’Shea said.

McInnis said it’s possible the research could lead to new types of drug trials. If it becomes possible to test new drug candidates in these cells, patients would be spared the current trial-and-error approach that leaves many with uncontrolled symptoms, he said.

Source: News max health