Polarity Index;

Antipsychotics trieved by calculating Number Needed to Treat (NNT) for prevention of depression and NNT for Index value above 1.0 indicates a relative greater antimanic prophylactic efficacy, number www.e l sev i e r. com / l European Neuropsychopharmacology (2012) 22, 339–346below 1.0 a relative greater antidepressive efficacy. The polarity index for the drugs used in maintenance therapy for bipolar disorder was 12.09 for risperidone, 4.38 for aripiprazole, 3.91 for ziprasidone, 2.98 for olanzapine, 1.39 for lithium, 1.14 for quetiapine, and 0.40 for lamotri-gine. Polarity index of valproate and oxcarbazepine may not be reliable due to the failure of their maintenance trials. The polarity index provides a measure of how much antidepressant versus antimanic a drug is in bipolar disorder prophylaxis, and may guide the choice of mainte-nance therapy in bipolar patients. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. and ECNP. All rights reserved.prevention of mania ratio, as emerging from the results of randomized placebo-controlled trials. Included trials were randomized and double blind, with a minimal duration of 24 weeks, asses-sing effectiveness of a mood stabilizer or antipsychotic drug alone or in combination with a mood stabilizing agent versus a placebo comparator in BD maintenance treatment. PolarityMaintenance treatment; Mood stabilizers; of bipolar disorder (BD) by the means of Polarity Index. Polarity Index is a new metric indicating the relative antimanic versus antidepressive preventive efficacy of drugs. Polarity Index was re- ⁎ Corresponding author at: Hospital