ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
This article is part of the Research TopicMental Health Challenges in Long-term Pharmacotherapy for Patients with Chronic DiseasesView all 15 articles
Sex differences in cognitive function among patients with bipolar disorder
Provisionally accepted
- Jining Medical University, Jining, China
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Bipolar disorder(BD) is a severe mental disease with high recurrence rates and serious cognitive impairment. Sex differences influence the clinical characteristics and cognitive functions of bipolar disorder. However, sex influences in cognitive impairment of bipolar disorder remains unclear. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the role of sex differences in cognitive function in a large sample of patients suffering from bipolar disorder.The sample included 243 individuals, 168 patients with first-diagnosed bipolar disorder (107 males and 61females) and 75 healthy controls(HC) (44 males and 31females). Cognitive functions were assessed by Continuous performance Test (CPT), Digiatl Span Test (DST), Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST). Cognitive functions were compared between patient groups and healthy controls groups.(1) Compared with female patients, the PPE and DST-Total scores of male patients were significantly higher in the bipolar disorder group (P<0.05). (2) There were significant main effects of group for CPT, DST and WCST (All P<0.05). There were significant main effects of group and sex for TA and NPE (All P<0.05). (3) The TA and NPE of male patients is significantly higher than female patients(P<0.05).For male subjects, the TA and NPE score of BD patients were significantly higher than HC subjects (P<0.05). For female subjects, the NPE score of bipolar disorder patients was significantly higher than healthy control subjects (P<0.05). (4) The admission times were significantly negatively correlated with attention function score (P<0.01). .Both male and female bipolar disorder patients have cognitive impairment. Sex plays a crucial role in cognitive function among first-diagnosed patients with bipolar disorder. While male patients exhibited a better memory span, they demonstrated greater deficits in cognitive flexibility and attention stability.These findings suggest that male patients may be more vulnerable to executive function deficits, whereas female patients may show greater vulnerability in memory.
Keywords: Attention, Bipolar Disorder, cognition impairments, Executive Function, sex differences
Received: 01 Jun 2025; Accepted: 11 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhang, Song, Yang, Wei and Cao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Zhonggang Wang
Zhenzhen Yang
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