Neuroinflammation in bipolar disorders

Recent literature based on peripheral immunity findings speculated that neuroinflammation, with its connection to microglial activation, is linked to bipolar disorder. The endorsement of the neuroinflammatory hypotheses of bipolar disorder requires the demonstration of causality, which requires longitudinal studies. We aimed to review the evidence for neuroinflammation as a pathogenic mechanism of bipolar disorder. We carried-out a hyper inclusive PubMed search using all appropriate neuroinflammation-related terms and crossed them with bipolar disorder-related terms. The search produced 310 articles and the number rose to 350 after adding articles from other search engines and reference lists. Twenty papers were included that appropriately tackled the issue of the presence (but not of its pathophysiological role) of neuroinflammation in bipolar disorder. Of these, 15 were post-mortem and 5 were carried-out in living humans. Most articles were consistent with the presence of neuroinflammation in bipolar disorder, but factors like treatment may mask it. All studies were cross-sectional, preventing causality to be inferred. Thus, no inference can be currently made about the role of neuroinflammation in bipolar disorder, but a link is likely. The issue remains little investigated, despite an excess of reviews on this topic