NCMD Seminar Presents 'Lithium: Lower Doses and Formulations'

Today, Dr Victoria Wing, Academic Clinical Fellow in General Adult Psychiatry within the NCMD and Core Trainee in Psychiatry, delivered a wonderful presentation on “Lithium: Lower Doses and New formulations – Potential benefits on cognition, inflammation, and mitochondrial function?” for our NCMD seminar programme. Dr Wing has interests in psychopharmacology and neuroimaging to study mood disorders and treat optimisation. She is currently working on lithium-focused studies with Dr David Cousins.

The presentation covered a comprehensive update on the literature, describing potential benefits of low dose lithium, particularly on attenuating cognitive decline in dementia. She also presented work on different lithium formulations, including lithium orotate which has been proposed to have less side effects compared to the more commonly prescribed lithium carbonate. Related to her recent work on imaging low dose lithium in the brain using Li-MRI, she described the growing literature on the role of inflammation and mitochondrial function in psychiatric and neurodegenerative conditions and how lithium may have positive effects on these systems.

She then introduced plans for an exciting new study that she is currently working on: 'Supplementary Lithium: Imaging, Peripheral Inflammation and Mitochondrial Function (SLIPI)'

Thank you very much to Dr Wing for delivering this presentation.

For more information on the SLIPI study which will be recruiting soon, please see the link below: