Pharmacotherapy exposure as a marker of disease complexity in bipolar disorder: Associations with clinical & genetic risk factors.

Individuals with bipolar disorder (BD) require chronic pharmacotherapy, typically including medication switches or polypharmacy due to persisting symptoms or intolerable side effects. Here, we quantified pharmacotherapy exposure (PE) of Mayo Clinic BD Biobank participants using the number of cross-sectional (at enrollment) and lifetime BD-specific medications and medication classes, to understand the relationship between PE and markers of disease severity or treatment failure, psychiatric comorbidities, and polygenic risk scores (PRS) for six major psychiatric disorders. Being female (p < 0.05), older (p < 0.01), having history of suicide attempts (p < 0.0001), and comorbid attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (p < 0.05) or generalized anxiety disorder (p < 0.05) were uniformly associated with higher PE. Lifetime exposure to unique medication classes among participants with BD-I was significantly lower than for those with schizoaffective disorder (estimate = -2.1, p < 0.0001) while significantly higher than for those with BD-II (estimate = 0.5, p < 0.01). Further, higher PRS for schizophrenia (SCZ) and anxiety resulted in greater lifetime medication counts (p < 0.01), both driven by antipsychotic (p < 0.001) and anxiolytic use (p < 0.05). Our results provide initial evidence of the utility of PE as a measure of disease complexity or treatment resistance, and that PE may be predicted by higher genetic risk for SCZ and anxiety.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interests SLM reports receiving personal fees for advisory boards and/or consultation from Idorsia, Levo, Novo Nordisk, Otsuka, Sunovion, and Takeda; receiving grant support from Idorsia, Janssen, Marriott Foundation, Myriad, National Institute of Mental Health, Novo Nordisk, Otsuka, and Sunovion; and receiving payments from Johnson & Johnson for being an inventor on US Patent No. 6323,236 B2. ABCB has received lecture and consulting fees from Asofarma and Exeltis. MLP has served on an advisory board for Janssen and has received grant support from ANID FONDECYT Regular 1181365, FONDEF ID19I10116 and Basal Funding for Scientific and Technological Center of Excellence, IMPACT, #FB210024. MAF reports the following conflicts of interest: grant support from Assurex Health and Mayo Foundation; CME/travel/honoraria from Carnot Laboratories, American Physician Institute; and financial interest/stock ownership/royalties in Chymia LLC.
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