Drugs Used for Bipolar Disorder can Cause Kidney Damage
Drugs that contain lithium used to treat bipolar disorder can cause serious kidney damage. The benefit gained from these drugs, however, outweighs the risks, and scientists at the Sahlgrenska Academy therefore recommend that treatment with lithium-based drugs should continue.
Lithium has been used in the treatment of bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, since the 1960s. Lithium-based drugs are the most effective agents available to prevent depression and manic behaviour. Subsequent studies have shown that treatment with lithium reduces the risk of suicide, and many patients all over the world depend on lithium treatment to live a good life.
Scientists at the Sahlgrenska Academy have now shown that treatment with lithium can give rise to serious kidney damage.
Harald Aiff is a research student and psychiatrist working in a research group of experts in psychiatry and renal medicine. He shows in his thesis that patients who began treatment with lithium before 1980 have an eight times higher risk of developing kidney failure that requires dialysis or transplantation.
No patients who started the treatment after 1980 and subsequently developed kidney failure have been found, which may mean that the risk has fallen significantly. If so, this is probably the result of the introduction of safer procedures for lithium treatment introduced at the beginning of the 1980s.
The scientists in Gothenburg, however, strongly advise against ending treatment with lithium. They conclude that the benefits in the treatment of bipolar disorder outweigh the risk of kidney damage. It is, however, important to monitor the kidney function of patients treated with lithium often.
“Lithium-based drugs are extremely important for many patients. Despite an increase in the risk of kidney damage, untreated bipolar disorder is a much more serious condition. That’s why we recommend treatment with lithium,” says Harald Aiff.
The thesis Clinical studies on long-term lithium therapy and kidney failure will be defended at a disputation on May 22.
Link to the thesis: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/35201
Contact:
Harald Aiff, research student at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Cell: +46 76 771 0425
harald.aiff@neuro.gu.se
Supervisor: Associate professor Jan Svedlund, jan.svedlund@vgregion.se, cell: +46 70 716 4849
Press Officer
Krister Svahn
Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg
46766-18 38 69
4631-786 3869
krister.svahn@sahlgrenska.gu.se
The Sahlgrenska Academy is the faculty of health sciences at the University of Gothenburg. Education and research are conducted within the fields of pharmacy, medicine, odontology and health care sciences. About 4,000 undergraduate students and 1,200 postgraduate students are enrolled at Sahlgrenska Academy. Around 1,400 people work at the Sahlgrenska Academy, 850 of them are researchers and/or teachers. 2013 Sahlgrenska Academy had a turnover of 2,4 billion SEK.
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