Association between childhood maltreatment and the clinical course of bipolar disorders: a survival analysis of mood recurrences

International audienceObjectives: Childhood maltreatment, also referred as childhood trauma, increases the severity of Bipolar Disorders (BD). Childhood maltreatment has been associated with more frequent mood recurrences, however mostly in retrospective studies. Since scarce, further prospective studies are required to identify whether childhood maltreatment may be associated with the time to recurrence in BD.Methods: Individuals with BD (N=2008) were assessed clinically and for childhood maltreatment at baseline, and followed-up for two years. The cumulative probability of mood recurrence over time was estimated with the Turnbull's extension of the Kaplan-Meier analysis for interval-censored data, including childhood maltreatment as a whole, and then maltreatment subtypes as predictors. Analyses were adjusted for potential confounding factors.Results: The median duration of follow-up was 22.3 month (IQR:12.0-24.8). Univariable analyses showed associations between childhood maltreatment, in particular all types of abuses (emotional, physical and sexual) or emotional neglect, and a shorter time to recurrence (all p values <0.001). When including potential confounders into the multivariable models, the time to mood recurrence was associated with multiple/severe childhood maltreatment (i.e. total score above the 75th percentile) (HR=1.32 95%CI(1.11-1.57), p=0.002), and more specifically with moderate/severe physical abuse (HR=1.44 95%CI(1.21-1.73), p<0.0001). Living alone, lifetime anxiety disorders, lifetime number of mood episodes, baseline depressive and (hypo)manic symptoms and baseline use of atypical antipsychotics were also associated with the time to recurrence.Conclusions: In addition to typical predictors of mood recurrences, an exposure to multiple/severe forms of childhood maltreatment, and more specifically to moderate to severe physical abuse, may increase the risk for a mood recurrence in BD. This leads to the recommendations of more scrutiny and denser follow-up of the individuals having been exposed to such early life stressors

Clinical predictors of recurrences in bipolar disorders type 1 and 2: A FACE-BD longitudinal study

Objective: To examine which characteristics predict the time to a first mood recurrence at three years in Bipolar Disorder type I (BD-I) and type II (BD-II). Methods: Individuals with BD were followed up to 3 years. Turbull's extension of the Kaplan-Meier analysis for interval-censored data was used to estimate the cumulative probability of recurrence over time. Separate models were performed according to BD subtype to determine which baseline factors were predictive of recurrences and were adjusted for age, gender and educational level. Results: We included 630 individuals with BD-I and 505 with BD-II. The first recurrence of any polarity occurred earlier in BD-II (p = 0.03). The first depressive recurrence occurred earlier in BD-II (p < 0.0001), whereas the first (hypo)manic recurrence occurred earlier in BD-I (p = 0.0003). In BD-I, the clinical variables that were associated to the time to a first mood recurrence were depressive symptoms, lifetime rapid cycling, global activation and the number of psychotropic medications at baseline. In BD-II, the time to a first recurrence was associated with a younger age at onset of BD and a higher number of lifetime mood episodes. The Areas Under the Curve for both models were moderate. Conclusion: Predictors of recurrences showed few specificities to BD-I or BD-II. The ability to predict recurrences in BD based on socio-demographic and clinical variables remained too moderate for a transfer in daily practice. This study highlights the need for further studies that would include other types of predictors, such as molecular, cognitive or neuro-imaging ones, to achieve an accurate level of prediction of recurrences in BD.Sorbonne Universités à Paris pour l'Enseignement et la RechercheFondaMental-Cohorte