Blood test for bipolar depression will end 40% of misdiagnoses

bipolar disorder often confused with depression, which leads to 40% of misdiagnoses. To address this problem, the Clínic Hospital and the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital (Barcelona) are developing a blood test that can identify patients with bipolar disorder and reduce delays in diagnosis from an average of eight years to one month.

When the brain is not functioning well, it sends signals, just like the liver, and by recording these signals or biomarkers through a blood test, changes in RNA molecules are detected that can be detected. undiagnosed bipolar depression– Eduard Vieta, head of the psychiatric service at the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona, ​​explains in an interview with Efe during European Mental Health Week.

In Spain, about 6% of the population (2.5 million people) suffer from major depression and about 2% (about 900,000 people) suffer from Bipolar disorder. Inadequate treatment puts health at risk, increases comorbidities and increases system costs, Vieta emphasizes.

The myEDIT-B trial, carried out by the two hospitals together with two centers in France and Denmark, is funded by the EU and will be tested in Spain at the end of the year. reliability is about 90%.

Once CE marked, the researchers hope that the test will be included in the health system’s portfolio of services.

Bipolar disorder has very high genetic component, but the research also advances epigenetics and measures the impact of environmental factors.

Vieta explains that the patient taking this blood test must have “Quite intense and severe depression that it was a disease. “Some types of depression have genetic and biological causes rather than indirect causes, so the test helps differentiate one from the other.”

This expert says precision psychiatry is the future. “Until now, the diagnosis was made on the basis of clinical information: the patient tells what is happening to him, and the family complements the information. This is the blood biomarker field allows you to prove which confirms suspicions.

In a patient with bipolar disorder ups and downs of mood preceded by manic episodes. “If you treat a person with bipolar disorder with antidepressants as if it were normal depression, you can trigger a high and get into huge problems,” he warns.

Pathology with the highest suicide risk

Treatment for bipolarity includes mood stabilizers. drugs such as lithium. “They lift you out of depression without causing the jolt of the patient making reckless purchases or engaging in uninhibited behavior that leads to inappropriate behavior.”

The average age of onset of the disease is 20 years, but there are also children, adolescents and young adults, as well as cases that begin later in life. Vieta recalls that the suicide rate among the population with bipolar disorder can reach 20%, and this is the pathology with the highest risk of committing suicide.

This script demonstrates need for early diagnosis such as the blood test implemented in Italy in 2023 and in France this year with the approval of the European EIT Health Network. Another benefit of the test is that it normalizes psychiatry by providing an objective test that can eliminate stigma.

“No one blames you for having a urinary tract infection or pneumonia, but with depression there is a lot of guilt. The fact that accurate psychiatry exists is the first step to ensuring that depression and bipolarity are not seen as something dark just because the brain is less known and more complex,” he notes.

Eve, who hid her bipolar disorder for eight years.

The death of her brother at the age of 24 in an accident caused Eva to experience untreated depression, which manifested itself in “bag of fears” and inability to communicate. Eva admits that she did not grieve and that the depressive state she experienced without medical supervision became the cause of a manic outburst eight years later, diagnosed as bipolar disorder.

“Bipolar disorder hides very well under depression,” explains this patient, who admits that a blood test like the one she is now planning could detect bipolar disorder early: “Every outbreak affects your neurons. Avoiding them is vital.

Eva lived in Barcelona but moved to the Ampurdan region in search of peace and escape from the noise. “I started a new life and I wanted to stop taking medications.” which caused an explosion of activity.

“I did a thousand things and didn’t finish any of them, it was like I was resurrected, but my family realized that something was going on.”

The situation ended with hospitalization in the Santa Caterina Hospital (Gerona), where He learned that he could not stop taking the medication. Eva also felt stigmatized, in her case at her son’s school. The child’s classmate told him in class that his mother was “bipolar and crazy,” which led to a mother-son conversation in which Eva explained that having the disorder does not affect the family’s well-being.

Eva let her son know that with “good medications and doctors there will be no problems,” she explained to him the importance of adherence to treatment and family support, and, above all, that a patient with bipolar disorder knows that “he is not alone.”