Digital technology might offer real hope for patients with bipolar disorders with a team of researchers in their preliminary results stating that a wearable bracelet has helped measure electrical impulses in the skin and other physiological biomarkers which might be associated with mood changes in bipolar disorder.
The group of Barcelona-based psychiatrists, in collaboration with data scientists in Edinburgh, had used a research grade wearable device to continuously collect several physiological biomarkers during the diverse phases and episodes of bipolar disorder.
Researcher Diego Hidalgo-Mazzei said “Each participant was fitted with a commercially available Empatica E4 bracelet, which they were asked to wear for around 48 hours.
This can measure a variety of physiological changes, but we were most interested in measuring small electrophysiological changes in the skin of the wearer.
The researchers found that bipolar disorder patients in their depressed phase had on average a significantly lower skin electrical activity than the rest of the bipolar group or the healthy control group. “We also found that as an individual moved from manic to depressive state (or vice versa), this was detectable by a change in skin surface electrical activity,” said the researchers.
The work is at an early stage, but they hope that they will be able to build on these patterns to detect mood swings in bipolar disorder sufferers, helping in diagnosis and potentially offering more rapid and personalized treatments.
If successful, this could lay the foundation for a new approach to diagnose and treat bipolar disorders.
Bipolar disorder is defined by the occurrence of episodes (either manic or depressive) interspersed with periods of wellbeing known as euthymia.
To date, the course of the illness is entirely unpredictable, and the occurrence of new episodes relies solely on their early recognition at a subjective level through early-warning symptoms.
Among the collected physiological biomarkers is electrodermal activity which uses changes in the skin’s electrical conductivity to indicate the level of stress through the reactivity of the nervous system.
This is a potential immediate indicator of whether someone is in a manic, depressive or in a normal mood state. They recruited 38 patients with bipolar disorder, and 19 healthy controls, all from the Barcelona area.
It is important for the patient and doctor to know how and when these mood fluctuations take place. It is important also to highlight that the treatment is different for manic or depressive states.
This can help with a prompt diagnosis and early personalised treatment, but it can also help in preventing adverse outcomes, for example in alerting to an increased risk of suicide, or of mood swings which may lead to dangers with activities such as driving.