Etiology of bipolar disorder Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Etiology of bipolar disorder - Research Paper Example ological but lately intensive psychotherapy is being increasingly recognized as a better alternative, although absolute therapy is still considered to be in its experimental stages. There have numerous studies to explain the etiology of the disease which have progressed from explanations of behavioral, social and psychological factors as its causes to the imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain and genetic defects making certain individuals particularly prone to it. As bipolar psychiatric disorder is characterized by sporadic, alternating events of depression and hyper manic state, the excitatory and inhibitory neuronal transmission have been the prime targets of pharmacological interventions. Molecular and cellular targets include inhibition of enzymes such as inositol monophosphatase, inositol polyphosphate 1-phosphatase, etc. by the administration of lithium salts whereby the lithium ion competes for a magnesium binding site which is responsible for prompting the action of such enzymes (Gould et al, 2004). Similarly valproate and carbamazapine inhibit another set of enzymes, as well as molecular signaling pathways in neuronal transmission. Inhibition of these enzymes is responsible for the tentative therapeutic action. Another aspect which has been noticed in psychiatric disease is the high heritability of schizophrenia as well as bipolar disorders which points a finger at the genetic predisposition to such disorders (Owen et al, 2004). Experimental studies in molecular genetics are already underway and chromosomal abnormalities have been noticed at specific locations of the human genome obtained from sufferers of psycho somatic disease. In bipolar disease, involvement of multiple genes has been suspected for long and studies are therefore intricate in design, but feasible with the modern tools of molecular biology which have become available only recently. In a genome wide association study conducted on pooled samples obtained primarily from European