
Adjunctive Low-Dose Lithium: The LiTMUS Trial
Can lithium pass the LiTMUS test?
RESEARCH UPDATE
In academic circles, there’s a joke about what “evidence-based medicine” really means: “If the study agrees with your position, then cite it; if it disagrees with your position, then quibble with its design.” More than a grain of truth is represented there, reminding us that strongly held beliefs are resistant to contrary evidence. So may I admit: the important, well-designed, multicenter
In this study, 283 patients with bipolar I or bipolar II disorder received “Optimized Personal Treatment” (OPT) from expert bipolar psychopharmacologists in 6 academic centers. They followed evidence-based strategies largely based on the
To be enrolled, patients had to be experiencing symptoms sufficient to warrant a change in treatment, but otherwise there were few exclusion criteria. This study design illustrates a recent trend toward designing trials that are more generalizable (the results are more likely to apply to your patient) and clinically meaningful (eg, the study went on for 6 months, a more realistic time frame over which to evaluate a result).
The results: there was no difference in clinical improvement when low-dose lithium was added to expert pharmacologic management of patients with bipolar I and bipolar II disorder. But patients who were taking lithium were significantly less likely to receive an antipsychotic, while achieving these equivalent outcomes.
If you’re not familiar with the TMAP algorithm, have a look at the 2005 update (eg, see Figures 1 and 2, pages 7 and 8 in this
Lithium comes late in the depression algorithm, so being randomized to the lithium arm in LiTMUS meant getting lithium much sooner than patients would otherwise. In the mania algorithm, lithium is a stage 1 option, but there are many alternatives. Getting randomized to the lithium arm meant getting lithium in addition to one of those alternatives.
But despite this augmentation, patients’ clinically rated improvement was no better than with OPT alone. Perhaps this means that if one is going to bother with lithium, more than low or medium doses will be needed. As the authors conclude: “We could interpret the results of LiTMUS as simple confirmation that higher dosages and blood levels of lithium plus OPT would be required for efficacy beyond OPT alone.”1
Interestingly, there was no relationship between lithium blood level and outcome: depression and mania scales (Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale and Young Mania Rating Scale, respectively). Those patients whose levels were less than 0.4 mEq/L improved just as much as those whose levels were 0.4 to 0.9 mEq/L.
Unfortunately, only about one-quarter of all the patients in
But these harder patients are the very ones for whom I often turn to low-dose lithium, with what I’d thought were frequently very good results. How to reconcile the LiTMUS results and my experience?
First, I must consider the possibility that my belief in lithium has biased my observations (eg, over-recognizing improvement on lithium, overinclination to attribute improvement to lithium, or selectively remembering improving cases and forgetting those that didn’t).
Otherwise, I have to look for design features of
Nevertheless, even though lithium plus OPT was not better than OPT alone, patients in the lithium arm were 23% less likely to receive a second-generation antipsychotic. As I noted in my
Disclosures:
Dr Phelps is Director of the Mood Disorders Program at Samaritan Mental Health in Corvallis, Ore. He is the Bipolar Disorder Section Editor for Psychiatric Times. Dr Phelps stopped accepting honoraria from pharmaceutical companies in 2008 but receives honoraria from McGraw-Hill and W.W. Norton & Co. for his books on bipolar disorders.
References:
1. Nierenberg AA, Friedman ES, Bowden CL, et al.
2. Suppes T, Dennehy EB, Hirschfeld RM, et al, for the Texas Consensus Conference Panel on Medication Treatment of Bipolar Disorder.
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