The impact of comorbidity on treatment outcomes

Alongside increasing the mortality rate in people with BD, the presence of a medical or psychiatric comorbidity can complicate treatment.¹ Indeed, the evidence base on which to make decisions about treatment is scarce.¹ Many larger clinical trials and registration studies actively exclude patients who have comorbid conditions, (e.g., clinical trials of bipolar disorder may exclude patients who have diabetes) which means that the treatments that are subsequently licensed are done so partly based on observations made outside the real-world of medical comorbidity.¹

Reference:
1. McIntyre RS, Rosenbluth M, Ramasubbu R, et al. Managing medical and psychiatric comorbidity in individuals with major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. Ann Clin Psychiatry 2012; 24 (2): 163–169.