Objective: The aim of this work was to examine autoantibodies in patients with bipolar disorder.
Method: We enrolled 94 patients with acute bipolar mania, with 37 of them medicated and 57 unmedicated at the time of blood sampling. The samples also consisted of 44 patients in the remission state and another 48 normal controls. We first used human glioblastoma (U373 MG) cell lysate to screen the potential autoantibodies present in sera of bipolar mania patients, and anti-heat shock protein (anti-HSP) 60, 70 and 90 autoantibodies were identified. We then examined the serum levels of these autoantibodies by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.
Results: The findings of this study showed that serum anti-HSP90 level was significantly higher in bipolar patients in acute mania than those in remission (p = 0.002).
Conclusions: The data of this study suggest that increased anti-HSP90 might be a state marker for acute mania in patients with bipolar disorder.