Welcome to another edition of Common Ground Online. Here's what's in this week's edition:
On April 1, 2009, a very significant study was published in Clinical Medicine: Psychiatry – an open access, peer reviewed electronic journal that covers diagnosis, management and prevention of psychiatric disorders.
The study, Database Analysis of Adults with Bipolar Disorder Consuming a Micronutrient Formula, took a detailed look at how 358 adults with bipolar disorder responded from taking EMPowerplus over a period of 6 months.
 Dermot Gately PhD., Department of Economics, New York University, New York, NY, U.S.A. |
The scientists who were involved in the research were
Dermot Gately, PhD., from New York University, and Bonnie J. Kaplan, PhD., from the University of Calgary. "Because of the incomplete benefit from pharmaceuticals and from single nutrient interventions in treating mood symptoms, and the more promising results from multinutrient formulas, we investigated the long-term benefits of broad-based micronutrient treatment," the authors remarked.
This brings the number of published EMPowerplus research studies to six.
Here's a little more about the study...
Key findings
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The strongest predictors of improved mental health were (a) increasing micronutrient dose and (b) decreasing psychiatric medications.
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For over half the sample, symptom improvement exceeded 50% at 3 and 6 months.
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One-third of the sample experienced very significant symptom reduction that exceeded 75%.
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The effect size was large (0.76) at 6 months.
More EMPowerplus = Better results
"...Decreasing symptom scores were associated with increasing dosage of the micronutrient formula..."
Medications can get in the way of results
 Bonnie J. Kaplan PhD., Departments of Pediatrics, and Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada |
"The decrease in symptoms was significant for individuals who were taking psychiatric medications as well as those who were not."
"[However], the group with the higher Medication Index seemed to be somewhat disadvantaged: the magnitude of their improvement was more moderate (about 35% compared to 44%–56% for the others)."
Placebo effect?
"Placebo effects, which plague many studies, are not likely to last 6 months: the fact that the symptom improvements were sustained or even increased at 6 months compared to 3 months argues strongly that these benefits cannot be attributed to placebo or positive expectancy effects."
Clinical and scientific implications
"...People searching for nutritional methods to manage their mood symptoms are likely to have been ineffectively treated by pharmaceuticals, and are not necessarily representative of everyone with bipolar disorder. In other words, many if not most of the participants in this database would probably be considered treatment resistant...the most difficult to treat, rendering these positive findings even more important clinically."
"Scientifically, the growing evidence of amelioration of psychiatric symptoms with multinutrient formulas, in addition to the growing evidence of only modest effects from pharmaceuticals, provides a powerful case for further research on micronutrient treatment."
Click on the citation below to download a PDF copy of the complete article:
Gately, D., & Kaplan, B. J. (2009). Database Analysis of Adults with Bipolar Disorder. Clinical Medicine: Psychiatry , 4:3-16.
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Yours in health,
The Truehope Staff
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