The third element in the periodic table is lithium. But it is much more than that. Everything from mobile phone batteries to aeroplane components to pacemakers is made with lithium and its derivatives. In psychiatric medicine, one chemical, lithium carbonate, is most typically used to treat people with bipolar disorder.
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| Lithium Carbonate |
Yes, if it surprises you that the same substance used in batteries is also good for your brain. Strangely enough, we're still figuring out how and why this treatment works even though we've been using it for years. Since the middle of the 1800s, physicians have used lithium compounds to treat neurological conditions. Then, in 1949, an Australian psychiatrist by the name of John Cade found that lithium carbonate could manage the wildly fluctuating moods associated with bipolar disorder.
Lithium carbonate was a second-line therapy for Bipolar illness over the following 70 years. The World Health Organization now regards it as one of the most crucial drugs in the world! It is wonderful that there is an effective pharmacological therapy for bipolar illness. Around 45 million individuals globally are thought to have it, which is roughly twice the population of New York. Although there are a few somewhat distinct bipolar illness subtypes, they may all lead to mood swings between exuberant mania and sadness. Or between a milder manic episode and a depressive episode. All things considered, though, this can cause disruptions in day-to-day living and, on average, reduce a person's life expectancy by 9 to 17 years. Having a medication like lithium is therefore crucial. Unfortunately, not everyone can use it.
According to a 2017 research, just one-third of individuals can be properly treated with lithium alone. For everyone else, it either doesn't work or needs to be used in combination with another medication to be effective. And for the longest time, we were unable to determine why. Or the basic reason why lithium works. But eventually, scientists began to fit the puzzle together. For starters, studies progressively showed, beginning in the 1970s, that lithium can assist maintain the amounts of magnesium in our systems.
Magnesium facilitates the transmission of electrical signals between neurons, contributing to the health of the nervous system. Furthermore, research demonstrates that persons with bipolar illness frequently have erratic amounts of it. Lithium's ability to maintain healthy levels of magnesium suggests that it may enhance the nervous system's ability to transfer impulses. However, that doesn't appear to be the only way it functions. For instance, the authors of a more recent 2018 study found that while lithium and magnesium get along well, salt is where it becomes competitive. Normal interactions between sodium and certain G-protein coupled receptors, or GPCRs, on cell membranes aid to trigger cellular responses.
More than a thousand different GPCRs have been identified in humans, and they play a key role in controlling a variety of physiological processes, including our sense of taste and the amounts of serotonin and dopamine in our brains. But in the 2018 study, researchers discovered that lithium may force sodium out of the picture. It turns out that lithium can deactivate GPCRs when it connects with them instead of sodium. But there are times when that is beneficial. Although scientists still don't fully understand how these receptors function, we do know that bipolar illness patients may have hyperactive ones. In addition, several GPCRs in the brain regulate the amounts of neurotransmitters like serotonin and noradrenaline, which researchers think to be important factors in bipolar illness. Lithium may be able to cure symptoms so well if it can inactivate some of these overactive receptors.
Overall, there are still a few things to be clarified, but we're starting to understand why lithium even functions. And in 2017, a new study was published that may perhaps provide some insight into why it only works in particular circumstances. In this study, the researchers mapped the chemical processes that occur in lithium. And in doing so, scientists learned that the protein CRMP2, which is involved in nerve cell transmission, can trigger bipolar illness.
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| Side Effects of Lithium. |
Researchers discovered that CRMP2 was much more active in bipolar disorder patients who didn't react to lithium therapy than in individuals who did. This is significant for a number of reasons. One benefit of knowing how lithium interacts with these proteins is that clinicians might more accurately anticipate which patients could benefit from lithium therapy. However, these findings may also indicate that alterations in a person's genetic makeup aren't the exclusive cause of bipolar illness.
The way that proteins like CRMP2 are handled inside of cells may also have an impact on this. This kind of knowledge may one day inspire the creation of brand-new medications and even diagnostic procedures. Additionally, a diagnostic test might greatly expedite the process because it often takes eight years for bipolar disease to be identified in an individual. Of course, not every situation would warrant this. Additionally, it wouldn't address other issues related to diagnosis, such as the stigma associated with bipolar disorder.
However, it would be a positive move for some people. Even though we've been researching lithium carbonate for a long time, we're just now starting to uncover some of its mysteries. But as we discover more about this substance, we will be better able to comprehend how bipolar disease functions and how to create efficient therapies for individuals who require them.
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