Genome-wide Association Study in a Dish Provides New Insights into an Old Medication

Understanding how lithium salts stabilize mood in bipolar disorder (BD) has been a quest of biological psychiatry for more than 50 years. While the impact of lithium on the inositol pathway through inhibition of GSK3B (glycogen synthase kinase-3b) and lithium’s promotion of neuroprotective factors like CREB (cAMP response element binding protein) are well established, we still do not know how these biochemical effects help modulate mood. Even less is known about how lithium interacts with the large and growing number of genetic risk factors for BD that have been identified through genome-wide association studies [GWASs; for review, see (1)].