Overview
- A Japanese team led by Prof. Tadafumi Kato and Dr. Akito Nagakura examined postmortem paraventricular thalamus and medial temporal lobe tissue using immunohistochemistry for phosphorylated tau, amyloid-β, α-synuclein, TDP-43, CHMP2B and CK-1δ.
- Patients with bipolar disorder showed higher neurofibrillary tangle Braak stages plus frequent argyrophilic grains, indicating greater tau-related pathology.
- CHMP2B-positive granulovacuolar degeneration appeared in the paraventricular thalamus in roughly half of cases, a previously unreported finding for this region in bipolar disorder.
- Authors interpret the region-specific protein changes as consistent with neurodegenerative processes involving the thalamus and medial temporal structures.
- Published Sept. 2 in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, the study is limited to postmortem tissue, prompting calls for replication, in vivo biomarker development and functional studies before any clinical application.