This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Pediatric Bipolar Disorder (PBD) is a spectrum of chronic debilitating illness characterized by elevated symptoms of mania (ESM).
We aim to study the phenomenology, diagnostic evolution, psychosocial functioning, family history and risk factors (including genetic risk factors) of 600 children ages 6-12 years who present for clinical care with ESM regardless of their bipolarity diagnosis. Bipolar disorder, being one of the most familial, heritable, and well-defined mental disorders, has attracted tremendous effort to unravel its genetic determinants. Presenting the same challenges to genetic analysis as many other complex genetic diseases, it has also greatly stimulated the development of novel statistical genetic methods over the past two decades. The effort to locate the underlying genes, however, has not met with much success. Pediatric Bipolar Disorder, together with its subtypes, is recognized as potentially more genetically loaded and homogeneous. Hence, genetic analysis focusing on this earlier onset form might be more profitable, considering the breakthroughs in the quest for underlying genes of breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease, through similar strategies. A grant proposal 'Longitudinal Assessment of Manic Symptoms' to study the genetics of pediatric bipolar disorder has recently been funded and data collection started. Existing methods implemented in the S.A.G.E. software, as well as newly developed statistical methods suitable for the challenge posed by the genetic analysis of PBD, will be employed to perform segregation, linkage and association analyses.
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