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Bipolar Disorder Case Study

Decent Essays

Animal Studies in mouse model of bipolar disorder. Genetic Models Role of Ank3 in the pathophysiology of psychiatric illness was studied in mice. Ank3 gene knockdown was carried using RNAi lentivirus. Behavioral tests were indicative of decreased anxiety-related behavior in a specific manner since hyperactivity related arm entries remained unchanged. Number of battery of tests revealed no change in general motor activity (novel open field), conventional task assessing sensitometer gating (prepulse inhibition), auditory and visual sensory performance (acoustic startle response and visible platform Morris water maze), associative learning (cued and contextual fear conditioning) and forced swim test between Ank3 knockdown mice and control. The …show more content…

BDNF also exerts its biological effects by using ERK–mitogen-activated kinase pathways . BDNF and the ERK pathway represent one of the key signaling cascades mediating neurotropic action and synaptic plasticity, and has received considerable recent attention for its potential involvement in the pathophysiology and treatment of BD(Coyle and Duman, 2003). Therefore, Engel et al., 2008 (Engel S.R., Creson T.K., Hao Y., Shen Y., Maeng S., Nekrasova T., Landreth G.E., Manji H.K., Chen G. (2008). The extracellular signal-regulated kinase pathway contributes to the control of behavioral excitement. Mol. Psychiatry 14, 448–461), investigated the potential role of ERK subtypes in regulating affective behavioral modulation. ERK1 KO mice were hyperactive, had enhanced goal directed activity, reward seeking behavior and less depression like behavior. The mice showed increased number of entries in open arms of EPM but time spent in the open arms did not differ from wild type mice. Moreover, these mice showed increased locomotor activity after amphetamine injection which was reversed with lithium treatment. Treatment with valproate and olanzapine reduced late-phase baseline motor activity, although lithium showed no such effect suggesting different therapeutic mechanisms used by lithium and valproate. Lithium and valproate also increase the levels of mitochondrial protein Bcl-2 (B-cell lymphoma 2) and has been found to enhance mitochondrial function. Although bipolar disorder is not a pure mitochondrial disorder but several line of evidence suggests mitochondrial involvement in the pathophysiology of the disorder (Kato and Kato, 2000; Quiroz et al., 2008; Stork and Renshaw, 2005 Kato T., Kato N. (2000). Mitochondrial dysfunction in bipolar disorder. Bipolar Disord. 2, 180–190. Quiroz J.A., Gray N.A., Kato T., Manji H.K. (2008).

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