A Study to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of Flexible Dose of Quetiapine Fumarate (Seroquel) Switching From Other Drugs in the Treatment of Acute Manic Patients With Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder (BD) is also named as a bipolar affective disorder, belonging to a kind of severe mental disorder involving both mania or hypomania and depression episode, with lifetime prevalence between 1.2 - 1.6%. The hygienic burden of bipolar disorder is high, and its disease burden lies in top 10 position among the population of 15 - 44 years of old patients and concomitant with relative high suicide rate (10 - 15%) and mutilation rate, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) 2001 Annual Report. Drug treatment is one of the main treatment methods for this kind of disease, and the dose selected will interfere the efficacy and prognosis of the patient. Quetiapine fumarate (Seroquel) is a dibenzothiazepine derivative, which is widely used in the world. It has the indications in schizophrenia, bipolar mania and depression approved by FDA. Quetiapine fumarate has been used in China for almost 10 years, which is in the treatment of schizophrenia. The indication of bipolar mania has been approved by SFDA recently. Exploration of the relationship between the dose and efficacy has been a hot spot in the clinical practice as the drug has a broad action spectrum and wide dose range (200mg/d-800mg/d). Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays an important role in the pathophysiology of bipolar disorder. Some clinical studies indicate the blood BDNF level decreased during the depression phase in the bipolar disorder, and the blood BDNF level is negative proportional to the severity of the depression; and the same phenomenon was found, i.e. the blood BDNF level decreased during the manic phase in the bipolar disorder, and the blood BDNF level is negative proportional to the severity of the mania. Quetiapine fumarate was found to reduce the decreasing of the expression of BDNF in the rat hippocampus and brain mantle in some animal experiments, indicating quetiapine fumarate has the possibility on potential interfering BDNF in the treatment. However, few st