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. 2008 May;10(3):443-6.
doi: 10.1111/j.1399-5618.2007.00572.x.

Age at onset in Sardinian bipolar I patients: evidence for three subgroups

Mirko Manchia  1 , Simona Lampus, Caterina Chillotti, Claudia Sardu, Raffaella Ardau, Giovanni Severino, Maria Del Zompo
Affiliations

Age at onset in Sardinian bipolar I patients: evidence for three subgroups

Mirko Manchia et al. Bipolar Disord. 2008 May.

Abstract

Objective: We studied age at onset (AAO) in order to assess the presence of different subgroups in a homogeneous genetic population, such as the Sardinian population.

Methods: Admixture analysis was applied in order to identify a model of separate normal distribution of AAO characterized by different means, variances and population proportions to allow for evaluation of different subgroups in a sample of 181 unrelated patients of Sardinian origin with bipolar disorder (BP) type I. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the means of AAO between subjects with a history of suicide attempts and subjects with no such history.

Results: The best-fitting model had three components with means (SD) of 18.1 (2.3), 24.3 (5.3) and 41 (11.5) years, comprising 36%, 39% and 25% of the sample, respectively. We obtained two cut-off points at 21 and 33 years, enabling the sample to be divided into three subgroups. The Mann-Whitney test revealed a difference between the mean AAO of subjects with a positive history of suicide attempts and that of subjects with no such history (p = 0.041).

Conclusions: We found three AAO sub-groups in our sample of BP I patients of Sardinian origin. Our findings add further support to the hypothesis whereby AAO acts as a clinical marker of biological heterogeneity in BP.

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