Publications by authors named "Alice A Cacilhas"
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to assess how bipolar disorder affects functioning in relation to aging, using a group of patients and matched controls for comparison.
- Results indicated that individuals with bipolar disorder experienced greater functional impairments than those without, with aging having a stronger negative effect on the bipolar group.
- The findings suggest that bipolar disorder significantly worsens the impact of aging on functioning, highlighting its chronic and progressively debilitating nature.
Article Synopsis
- The study presents the Portuguese validation of the Functioning Assessment Short Test (FAST), designed to measure functioning related to bipolar disorder.
- The FAST was tested on 100 bipolar disorder patients and controls for various types of validity, internal consistency, and reliability.
- Results indicate that the FAST effectively discriminates between patients and controls and demonstrates strong reliability and validity, making it valuable for use in international clinical studies.
It has been demonstrated that lithium (Li) and valproate (VPT), first line mood stabilizers, increase BDNF content in rat hippocampus and frontal cortex, which suggests that the regulation of neurotrophic factors might be associated with their pharmacological effects. In sight of the scarcity of studies with other neurotrophins, and the possible relevance of multiple neurotrophic signaling systems in bipolar disorder we investigated the effects of Li and VPT on NT-3 levels in rat serum and hippocampus, using an animal model of mania induced by amphetamine (AMPH). In the reversal model, adult male Wistar rats received AMPH or saline for 14 days, and between the 8th and 14th days, animals were treated with Li, VPT or saline.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccumulating evidence suggest that neural changes and cognitive impairment may accompany the course of bipolar disorder. Such detrimental effects of cumulative mood episodes may be related to changes in neurotrophins that take place during mood episodes but not during euthymic phases. The present study investigated serum neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) levels in patients with bipolar disorder during manic, depressed, and euthymic states, using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (sandwich-ELISA).
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