ABSTRACT
Introduction
Bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with cognitive abnormalities that may persist during euthymia and are linked to poor occupational performance. The cognitive differences between phases of BD are not well known. Therefore, a cross-sectional study with a relatively large population was conducted to evaluate the differences among BD phases in a wide range of neurocognitive parameters.
Methods
Neuropsychological profile of 169 patients with a diagnosis of BD in manic, depressive, mixed, and euthymic phases between the ages of 18 and 70 years were compared to 45 healthy individuals' between ages of 24 and 69 years. The working memory (digit-span backward test), face recognition, executive functions (verbal fluency and Stroop test), face recognition, and visual and verbal memory (immediate and delayed recall) were evaluated. For BD subgroup analyses, we used the Kruskal–Wallis (KW) test. Then, for the comparison of BD versus healthy individuals, we used the Mann–Whitney U (MWU) test.
Results
Analyses based on non-parametric tests showed impairments in BD for all tests. There were no significant differences between phases.
Conclusion
Cognitive performance in patients with BD appears to be mostly unrelated to the phase of the disorder, implying that cognitive dysfunction in BD is present even during remission.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dr. Giray Kandemirli for his help in reviewing and editing of the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Data availability statement
Data are not available due to ethical restrictions.