Patients with bipolar disorder have a lower functional exercise capacity than do healthy controls, according to a pilot study published in Psychiatry Research. Researchers found that backward stepwise regression analyses showed that foot pain, low back pain, and depressive symptoms account for 70% of the variance in functional exercise capacity of patients with bipolar disorder
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Davy Vancampfort, Ph.D, of the University of Leuven, Belgium, and his associates compared 30 patients with bipolar disorder with 30 healthy controls. All participants performed the 6-minute walk test to assess the functional exercise capacity and were screened for psychiatric symptoms using the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology and Hypomania Checklist-32. They found patients with bipolar disorder demonstrated a significantly poorer functional exercise capacity (590.8 plus or minus 112.6 m vs. 704.2 plus or minus 94.3 m) than did their peers, with foot and back pain were the most common negative predictors of functional exercise capacity in patients with bipolar disorder.
The authors noted that a multidisciplinary care model that includes improving the functional exercise capacity should be a key target for treatment. “Physical activity interventions delivered by physical therapists may help ameliorate pain symptoms and improve functional exercise capacity,” the authors wrote.
Read the full article here: (Psychiatry Res. 2015 Sept 30;229(1-2):194-9 [doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2015.07.040]).