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closeCo-occuring disorders
Posted by martinpr on 10 Jun 2011 at 13:45 GMT
I wonder what the alcohol use histories of subjects were because the abnormalities discussed are very common among alcoholics and bipolar patients have a 60-80 percent lifetime prevalence of drug use disorders.
RE: Co-occuring disorders
arhoskin replied to martinpr on 11 Jun 2011 at 00:14 GMT
Thank you for your interest, and as you rightly point out movement abnormalities are very common in alcoholics and there is high comorbidity between BD and substance abuse disorders. In answer to your question, of the 16 BP participants, 5 had a history of alcohol dependence. However, of the 11 remaining, there was a high number with substance abuse in their history. As you allude to, it would be nearly impossible to run a study with bipolar disorder patients who had no history of substance/alcohol abuse and it would skew results in such a way that we wouldn't get satisfying answers regarding underlying causes of the disorder anyway. That said, we did run our statistics using the 11 participants who had not had alcohol dependence in their history and the pattern of results was similar to when the dependence patients were included, with all previously significant results remaining significant (p < .05).