Lithium Retention in Mania

Abstract

Evaluating lithium retention requires measurement of serum and urinary excretion lithium ion levels over a specified period of time following a single orally administered dose of lithium carbonate. We report the lithium retention of a matched group of acute manic patients and normal controls. Our results confirm earlier work suggesting that acute manic patients retain significantly more orally administered lithium ion than normal controls; that this difference is detectable by comparing amounts of lithium ion excreted in the urine, but not by comparing serum concentrations; and that this retention difference is apparent as early as six hours after the test dose administration and increases over a limited time.