The Wide AmbispectiVE study of clinical management and burden of bipolar disorder (BD) (WAVE-bd; NCT01062607) is ongoing to address limitations of longitudinal BD studies to-date focused on single disease phases or treatment.

To understand current treatment approaches for patients with BD in daily clinical practice.

Multinational, multicentre, non-interventional, longitudinal study of patients diagnosed with BD-I or BD-II with ≥1 mood event in the preceding 12 months, followed-up for 12-27 months (including retrospective and prospective phases). Site and patient selection provided a sample representative of bipolar populations. The study includes descriptive analyses of demographics, diagnosis, medical history and clinical management. Medication use during the retrospective phase will be presented.

Preliminary results (based on data availability at time of submission) are presented from 2829 patients recruited March-September 2010. During the retrospective period, 94.3% (94.2% BD-I, 94.6% BD-II) of patients received BD therapy. Among BD-I and BD-II patients, respectively, the most common number of prescribed drugs was two (29.5%, 31.5%); 17.6% and 18.1% were prescribed one drug, and 11.5% and 9.8% were prescribed five or more. Drug classes most commonly used (BD-I, BD-II, respectively) were atypical antipsychotics (64.5%, 48.9%) anticonvulsants (58.0%, 54.3%), antidepressants (39.6%, 66.7%) and lithium (31.2%, 17.3%). Electroconvulsive therapy was used in 12 (0.4%) patients (9 BD-I, 3 BD-II). Average treatment duration with atypical antipsychotics, anticonvulsants and antidepressants was 165.0, 199.7 and 169.7 days, respectively.

This ongoing study provides a multinational perspective on BD patient management practices in a large sample population. Financial support: AstraZeneca