Relationship of clinical course of illness variables to medical comorbidities in 900 adult outpatients with bipolar disorder.

Background: Medical illnesses are highly comorbid with bipolar disorder, but their relationship to illness characteristics has not been previously delineated.

Methods: The incidence of 34 medical conditions and 6 poor prognosis factors (PPFs) was derived from answers to a questionnaire in over 900 outpatients with bipolar disorder who gave informed consent. The relationship of PPFs to the number of medical comorbidities was examined by Mann-Whitney U, Pearson r, and logistic regression.

More medical comorbidities in patients with bipolar disorder from the United States than from the Netherlands and Germany.

Medical comorbidities are common in patients with bipolar (BP) disorder but have not been previously examined for differences between United States and Europe. More than 900 outpatients with BP I and BP II disorder (mean age, 41 years) filled out a questionnaire including the occurrence of 30 listed medical conditions. The patients from the United States were from Los Angeles, Dallas, Cincinnati, and Bethesda, whereas those from Europe were from Utrecht, Freiberg, and Munich.