FROM THE JOURNAL OF AFFECTIVE DISORDERS

Childhood maltreatment is associated with lifetime anxiety among people with bipolar disorder, Barbara Pavlova, Ph.D., and her associates reported.

The researchers recruited 174 adult outpatients with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder I or bipolar disorder II, of whom 29% had one anxiety disorder and 20% had two or more. More than half (56%) of the patients were female, and their median age was 42. The types of anxiety disorders among the patients ranged from generalized anxiety disorder (28%) to obsessive-compulsive disorder (4%).

Dr. Pavlova and her associates assessed the patients’ history of maltreatment in childhood using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire ( CTQ ), a 28-item self-report measure that asks about emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and about emotional and physical neglect. Anxiety disorders were assessed using the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview ( MINI ), wrote Dr. Pavlova of the psychiatry department at Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S.

They found that childhood maltreatment, indexed by higher CTQ total scores, was linked to a higher number of lifetime anxiety disorders (odds ratio, 1.5; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-2.14; P = .04). In addition, panic disorder was most strongly tied to childhood maltreatment (OR, 2.27; 95% CI, 1.28-4.02; P = .01).

The results suggest “that bipolar disorder with comorbid anxiety constitutes an [etiologic] subtype shaped to a greater extent by early environment,” the investigators wrote.

Read the full study here: ( J Affect Dis. 2016 Mar 1;192:22-7 ).

ghenderson@frontlinemedcom.com On Twittter @ginalhenderson

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