Two studies to date have been published regarding the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in bipolar patients. The unadjusted prevalence rates reported were 30% and 32%. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in a group of 142 bipolar patients from Spain.

Bipolar patients (ICD-10 criteria) from 11 centres in Spain were assessed cross-sectionally for metabolic syndrome according to the NCEP ATP III criteria.

The mean age was 47.3 (SD 14.5), 51.1% were male. On average, patients were receiving 2.8 (SD 1.3) drugs for the treatment of their bipolar disorder. Ninety-one percent were receiving mood stabilizers, 63.4% antipsychotics and 29.6 antidepressants. Eighty-seven percent of the antipsychotics prescribed were atypicals. The overall prevalence of metabolic syndrome in our sample was 24.6% Fifty-seven percent of the sample met the criterion for abdominal obesity, 37.4% for met the criterion for hypertriglyceridemia, 36.4% for low HDL-cholesterol, 25.2% for high blood pressure and 12.5% for high fasting glucose. No statistically significant difference was found between with and without the metabolic syndrome for gender, illness status (acute versus in remission), CGI-S-BP scores and number of medications used. Patients taking tow mood stabilizers had significantly higher metabolic syndrome rates than patients taking one mood stabilizer and than patients without mood stabilizer treatment (40% versus 17.8% and 11.1% respectively, p .02).

The prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in bipolar patients is high. It appears to be higher than that estimated for the Spanish general population.