Psychopathology and cognition as markers of risk for bipolar disorder

Mistry, Sumit 2020. Psychopathology and cognition as markers of risk for bipolar disorder. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a fairly common, highly heritable psychiatric disorder which can be highly disabling to those who suffer from it. There is a limited understanding of early precursors to BD that might be helpful to inform prediction models and knowledge of aetiology. Few population-based longitudinal studies have examined associations between measures of childhood psychopathology/cognitive functioning and BD, or phenotypic manifestations of increased genetic risk for BD in childhood. I investigated whether childhood psychopathology and cognitive domains examined from ages 8-11 years were associated with hypomania examined at ages 22-23 years. I then conducted a systematic review to identify phenotypes associated with genetic risk for BD, measured using a polygenic risk score (PRS) approach. Finally, I investigated whether increased genetic risk for BD, using a BD-PRS, was associated with various psychopathology and cognitive domains in childhood and hypomania in young adulthood. Findings from Chapter 4 suggest that borderline personality disorder (BPD) traits in childhood are strongly associated with hypomania, particularly the ‘risk-taking/irritable’ factor. Better performance in the domains of working memory, problem solving ability, verbal learning and emotion recognition are also associated with hypomania, with stronger association with the ‘active/elated’ factor (Chapter 5). Findings from Chapter 6 highlight a limited literature on phenotypic manifestations of increased genetic risk for BD in childhood/adolescence. Individuals with increased genetic risk for BD are more likely to have ADHD, and have poorer executive functioning, processing speed and performance IQ in childhood (Chapters 7 and 8). This thesis adds to a limited literature examining associations between measures of childhood psychopathology/cognition and hypomania in the general population, and about how increased genetic risk for BD is manifest in childhood/adolescence. Further work to examine the robustness of these findings in other populations at various stages of development are required, and to elucidate the mechanisms that underlie the associations observed.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Medicine
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	9 September 2020
Last Modified:	25 May 2021 01:27
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/134695

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