Millett CE, Perez-Rodriguez M, Shanahan M, et al. - Given the possible association of inflammation with poorer cognitive outcomes in bipolar disorder (BD), researchers examined 222 euthymic BD patients and 52 healthy controls for C-reactive protein (CRP) measures, a marker of systemic inflammation and risk of inflammatory disease. The study sample comprised nearly 80% of cases with BD-I, and the remainder were BD-II; a history of psychosis was reported in 42.6% of the sample. A statistically significant effect of CRP on cognitive performance on a broad range of tests was noted. Participants with CRP ≥ 5 mg/L vs those with lower CRP (< 5 mg/L) exhibited worse performance on several measures of executive functioning, MATRICS processing speed and MATRICS reasoning and problem-solving. In addition, CRP was identified to be a significant positive predictor of proxy cognitive decline, defined as the difference between premorbid and current IQ estimates, in a logistic regression analysis. Results indicate an association of elevated CRP with a broad cognitive dysfunction in affectively remitted BD patients. The results thereby suggest a subgroup of patients who might benefit from treatments to reduce inflammation.