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Gender differences in immediate memory in bipolar disorder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2009

D. Carrus ,
T. Christodoulou ,
M. Hadjulis ,
M. Haldane ,
A. Galea ,
A. Koukopoulos ,
V. Kumari  and
S. Frangou
D. Carrus
Affiliation:
Section of Neurobiology of Psychosis, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK
T. Christodoulou
Affiliation:
Section of Neurobiology of Psychosis, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK
M. Hadjulis
Affiliation:
Section of Neurobiology of Psychosis, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK
M. Haldane
Affiliation:
Section of Neurobiology of Psychosis, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK
A. Galea
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK
A. Koukopoulos
Affiliation:
Centro Lucio Bini, Rome, Italy
V. Kumari
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK
S. Frangou*
Affiliation:
Section of Neurobiology of Psychosis, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK
*
*Address for correspondence: Dr S. Frangou, Section of Neurobiology of Psychosis (PO66), Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK. (Email: [email protected])
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Abstract

Background

Gender is known to modulate the clinical course and severity of bipolar disorder (BD). Although cognitive abnormalities are an established feature of BD, there is limited information regarding whether gender also influences the pattern and severity of cognitive impairment.

Method

We evaluated the performance of 86 remitted patients with BD, type 1, (BD-I) (36 male and 50 female) and 46 healthy participants (21 male and 25 female) on tasks of general intellectual ability, memory encoding, recognition and retrieval, response inhibition and executive function (abstraction and perseveration). The impact of illness severity in patients was assessed using the global assessment of functioning (GAF).

Results

We found a gender effect and an interaction between diagnosis and gender on immediate memory, implicating encoding and retrieval processes, both showing male BD-I patients being disadvantaged compared with female patients and healthy controls. Immediate memory correlated with GAF scores and this association was statistically significant for male BD-I patients.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that gender differences in BD-I are associated with memory function, particularly processes relating to encoding and retrieval, and may contribute to poor functional outcome particularly in men.

Keywords

Bipolar disorderencodingexecutive functiongender retrievalmemory
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 40 , Issue 8 , August 2010 , pp. 1349 - 1355
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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