The Effect of Gender on Neurocognitive Functioning in Bipolar Disorder

Abstract

Introduction

Bipolar disorder (BD) is frequently associated with cognitive deficits in attention, verbal memory and executive functions that have been related to various clinical characteristics of the disorder.

Objectives

However, few studies have examined the effect of gender on cognition despite its clinical relevance.

Aims

The aim of our study was to investigate potential diagnosis-specific gender effects on visual memory/learning and executive functions in BD.

Methods

Cognitive performance of 60 bipolar-I patients and 30 healthy controls was evaluated by using CANTAB battery tasks targeting spatial memory (SRM), paired associative learning (PAL), executive functions (ID/ED, SOC). A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) of neuropsychological parameters was performed with gender and diagnosis as fixed effects and age and education as covariates. Following univariate analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were undertaken to examine the effect of gender on each neuropsychological task.

Results

Bipolar patients showed significantly poorer performance in paired associative learning (PAL), set shifting (ID/ED) and planning (SOC). Moreover, a diagnosis specific gender effect was observed for cognitive functioning in BD (gender × diagnosis interaction P = 0.029). Specifically, male healthy controls outperformed healthy females in tasks of visual memory/learning but this pattern was not sustained (SRM) or was even reversed (PAL) in BD patients.

Conclusions

The present study is one of the few studies that have examined the effect of gender on neurocognitive function in BD. Our findings indicate that the gender-related variation observed in healthy subjects is disrupted in BD. Moreover, they suggest that gender may modulate the degree of frontotemporal dysregulation observed in BD.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.