Antimanic and long-lasting mood stabilizing effect of memantine in bipolar I mood disorder: Two case reports

摘要

To the Editors:We recently reported that memantine, a noncompetitive iV-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist currently used in the treatment of Alzheimer disease, has a significant antimanic and sustained mood-stabilizing effect when used as an augmenting agent in treatment-resistant bipolar mood disorders. Moreover, Keck et al observed an acute antimanic effect of memantine monotherapy in manic patients with bipolar type I disorder (BP I).Here, we report 2 case histories of patients with BP I successfully treated with memantine monotherapy. These 2 cases confirm that, also as a monotherapy, the drug has an acute antimanic effect. Moreover, they provide further support to our previous observations that memantine has a clinically relevant sustained mood-stabilizing action with excellent safety and tolerability. In addition, they suggest that this effect can be obtained also when the drug is used as a monotherapy.