Adam Abba-Aji
There is a growing body of evidence on metabolic syndrome associated with antipsychotic medications. However, very limited data exist on metabolic syndrome and commonly prescribed mood stabilizers such as Lithium, Valproic acid and Carbamazepine. Method: This paper is a cross sectional survey of metabolic syndrome in a group of patients diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder (BPAD). The study completed a data on 32 patients, 19 females and 13 males. These patients were diagnostically stratified using ICD 10 into BPAD type 1(10) and BPAD type 2 (22). The groups were further divided into two according to their treatment with 19 patients receiving Lithium monotherapy and 13 Valproic acid monotherapy. The International Diabetic Federation (IDF) was used to screen all the patients for metabolic syndrome. Result: The result shows that Lithium has low prevalence of metabolic syndrome (10%) while Valproic acid possessed significant risk with a prevalence rate of 30%. Conclusion: It is therefore important to extend metabolic monitoring beyond antipsychotics to cover mood stabilizing agents especially Valproic acid. Limitation: Small sample size. However, it is very difficult to find bipolar patients on a monotherapy of mood stabilizer.