Overweight and obesity in bipolar disorder

Abstract

Aims of the study:To study Body Mass Index (BMI) and Blood Pressure (BP) in bipolar patients.Methods:Retrospective study in bipolar inpatients of an acute psychiatric Portuguese department during a two years period. Of the 60 bipolar inpatients, 31 were selected. The patients without height or weight data were excluded.Results:The mean age was 48.5 years. 66.7% of the patients were women. The most frequent pharmacological association (13.3%) was sodium valproate and olanzapine. Using INE´s (National Statistic Institute, 2007) criteria, 25.8% of these patients were overweight and 16.13% obese. Approximately 50% of the patients over 45 years were overweight or obese. Approximately 50% of the patients on sodium valproate were overweight or obese, although there was no statistically significant correlation between psychopharmacological treatment and BMI. Only 3.6% of the patients had systolic blood pressure above 140mmHg or diastolic blood pressure above 90mmHg.Conclusions:The studied population has a frequency of overweight superior to the general portuguese population (25.8% vs 18.6%). The percentage of patients with hypertension is inferior comparatively to the general population (3.6% vs 20%). The results of the study show the importance of monitoring and controlling metabolic risk factors in bipolar patients. Attending to the specificities of bipolar patients it is important to study prospectively metabolic syndrome in this population.