¹Douglas Hospital Research Centre, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Correspondence: Dr G Turecki, Douglas Hospital Research Centre, 6875 LaSalle Blvd., Verdun, Quebec, Canada H4H 1R3. Tel: +1 514 761 6131 ext. 2369; Fax: +1 514 762 3011; E-mail: gustavo.turecki@mcgill.ca

Received 11 October 2003; Revised 10 February 2004; Accepted 13 February 2004; Published online 13 April 2004.

Abstract

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a major psychiatric condition that commonly requires prophylactic and episodic treatment. There is important variability in the therapeutic response and side-effect profiles to currently available pharmacological agents. Pharmacogenetics have provided new hopes to develop more efficient treatment strategies tailored to the individual patient's needs. This review assesses nonsystematically studies using pharmacogenetic strategies in BD. Most of these studies have focused on patients selected according to lithium response, and more recently, a growing number of studies have been investigating genetic factors in mixed samples of patients classified according to response to antidepressant treatment. Although previous clinical and family studies support the use of pharmacogenetic strategies both to increase phenotype homogeneity as well as to identify genetic factors that may mediate response to treatment, most molecular studies carried out to date are still preliminary and in need of external validation. A major problem has been comparability between studies, in part, because of differences in the criteria used to define response. More attention should be paid to standardize the criteria for drug response definition.