Disorder age link

Disorder age link
Sep 8 2008 by Helen Rae, Evening Chronicle

OLDER fathers are more likely to have children with bipolar disorder, research suggests.

The risk goes up when men are older than 29 before they start their family, and is highest if they are over 55.

Increasing paternal age has already been linked with schizophrenia and autism, but not bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic depression.

The Swedish study, in Archives of Psychiatry, suggests the risk may, in part, be explained by ageing sperm.

For the study, they identified 13,428 patients in Swedish registers with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

After controlling for other factors like age of the individual's mother, number of siblings and family history of mental health problems, they found a clear link between risk of bipolar disorder and father's age.

The older an individual's father, the more likely he or she was to have bipolar disorder.