The Effect of DHA Supplementation on Cognition in Patients with Bipolar Disorder: An Exploratory Randomized Control Trial.

Valentina Ciappolino,Elisabetta Caletti,Alessandra Mazzocchi,Cecilia Prunas,Angela Andreella,Paolo Brambilla,Livio Finos,Giuseppe Delvecchio,Carlo Agostoni,Andrea Botturi,Francesca Siri,Stefano Turolo

doi:10.3390/nu12030708

Abstract

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental disorder with a wide range of cognitive deficits, both in the euthymic and acute phase of the disease. Interestingly, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in investigating the impact of ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on cognition in BD. In this context, the aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of docosahexaenoic acid (C22:6 ω-3, DHA) supplementation on cognitive performances in euthymic BD patients. This is an exploratory, single-centre, double-blind randomized controlled trial evaluating 12 weeks DHA supplementation (1250 mg daily) vs. a placebo (corn oil) in 31 euthymic BD patients compared to 15 healthy controls (HCs) on cognitive functions, assessed by the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Affective Disorder (BAC-A). Plasma levels of DHA were measured. After 12 weeks of treatment, no significant group differences were observed in all neuropsychological tests between the four groups, except for the emotion inhibition test, where HCs with DHA had higher scores compared to either BD with DHA (z = 3.9, p = 0.003) or BD with placebo (t = 3.7, p = 0.005). Although our results showed that DHA could be effective for ameliorating cognition in healthy subjects, future studies are still needed to clarify the impact of DHA on cognition in BD.

Highlights

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental disorder characterized by extreme mood swings, including episodes of mania and major depression, interspersed with periods of euthymia [1], which is often associated with reduced life expectancy and with the development of work and psychosocial disabilities [2]
Test post-hoc showed that healthy controls (HCs) with Omega 3 had lower mean age compared to BD patients with placebo (t = -3.2, p = 0.05) and BD patients with placebo had higher age compared to BD patients with Omega 3 (t = −3.3, p = 0.05)
Our results showed that only the group of HCs receiving 12 weeks of supplementation showed an improvement in cognitive performance in the emotion inhibition test from baseline to follow-up, while theThe group of BD

Summary

Introduction

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental disorder characterized by extreme mood swings, including episodes of mania (or hypomania) and major depression, interspersed with periods of euthymia [1], which is often associated with reduced life expectancy and with the development of work and psychosocial disabilities [2]. After the end of an acute episode, either manic or depressive, a significant number of patients do not recover their prior level of cognitive performance, resulting in reduced psychosocial functioning [5], which is not surprising since neurocognitive abilities have been found to be consistently associated with social, work, and global functioning deficits [5]. Based on this evidence, in the last decade, there has been growing interest in the investigation of the impact of both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments on cognition in BD, with, inconclusive results [8]. For pharmacological treatments, available evidence showed that many different drugs, including lurasidone, vortioxetine and modafinil, seem to be efficacious in ameliorating cognitive deficits in BD patients [9,10,11]

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