Bipolar Disorder | Pharmacor | G7 | 2015
Bipolar disorder (BPD) is a debilitating psychiatric illness affecting more than 20 million people across the seven major pharmaceutical markets under study (United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and Japan). BPD is increasingly viewed as a spectrum disorder, within which patients experience varying disease severities, from subthreshold hypomanic and depressive symptoms to severe manic and major depressive episodes; we expect increasing awareness and recognition of subtle hypomanic or subthreshold symptoms to moderately increase the diagnosis rate in BPD in the 2014-2024 study period. The disorder often requires lifetime treatment, and polypharmacy is common. Many currently available therapies effectively target the manic symptoms of the disorder; however, significant commercial opportunity remains for a therapy that can effectively control depressive symptoms or one that can better prevent future mood episodes as a maintenance therapy.
