Given a presumed role for norepinephrine (NE) in bipolar disorder, as well as the actions of mood-stabilizing drugs, we examined changes in mRNA expression for tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), the NE transporter (NET) and alpha 2A autoreceptor in the rat locus coeruleus after valproate treatment.
We attempted to test the hypothesis that there was allelic association between polymorphisms around the tyrosine hydroxylase locus and bipolar affective disorder.
While positive associations between TH and bipolar affective disorder have been found in several studies, many studies have failed to reproduce these results.