Overview

• Researchers examined postmortem paraventricular thalamus and medial temporal tissue from individuals with and without bipolar disorder using immunohistochemistry.
• Patients with bipolar disorder showed higher neurofibrillary tangle (Braak) stages and more argyrophilic grains, indicating increased tau-related pathology.
• CHMP2B-positive granulovacuolar degeneration was identified in the paraventricular thalamus in about half of the bipolar cases, which had not been reported in this region for the disorder.
• The analysis mapped proteins commonly tied to neurodegeneration, targeting phosphorylated tau, amyloid β, α-synuclein, TDP-43, and GVD markers CHMP2B and CK-1δ.
• The study was published September 2 in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences by Prof. Tadafumi Kato and Dr. Akito Nagakura, with authors emphasizing that postmortem findings do not establish causation.