Staying at the crossroads: assessment of the potential of serum lithium monitoring in predicting an ideal lithium dose.
OBJECTIVE
Lithium has been successfully employed to treat bipolar disorder for decades, and recently, was shown to attenuate the symptoms of other pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease, Down's syndrome, ischemic processes, and glutamate-mediated excitotoxicity. However, lithium's narrow therapeutic range limits its broader use. Therefore, the development of methods to better predict its dose becomes essential to an ideal therapy.


METHODS
the performance of adult Wistar rats was evaluated at the open field and elevated plus maze after a six weeks treatment with chow supplemented with 0.255%, or 0.383% of lithium chloride, or normal feed. Thereafter, blood samples were collected to measure the serum lithium concentration.


RESULTS
Animals fed with 0.255% lithium chloride supplemented chow presented a higher rearing frequency at the open field, and higher frequency of arms entrance at the elevated plus maze than animals fed with a 50% higher lithium dose presented. Nevertheless, both groups presented similar lithium plasmatic concentration.


CONCLUSIONS
different behaviors induced by both lithium doses suggest that these animals had different lithium distribution in their brains that was not detected by lithium serum measurement.


CONCLUSIONS
serum lithium concentration measurements do not seem to provide sufficient precision to support its use as predictive of behaviors.
Lima
Thiago Zaqueu
TZ
Department of Physiology, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
Blanco
Miriam Marcela
MM
Santos Júnior
Jair Guilherme dos
JG
Coelho
Carolina Tesone
CT
Mello
Luiz Eugênio
LE
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D018692:Antimanic Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000097:blood; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000097:blood / Q000188:drug therapy*; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D018021:Lithium Chloride / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000097:blood; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000187:drug effects*; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar
D018692:Antimanic Agents; D018021:Lithium Chloride