RECENTLY ...

• Team Lithium has been awarded funding by NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre for the Dementia, Mental Health & Neurodegeneration theme towards our PPI activities. At this pivotal point in determining our future research directions, we want to involve the public, prompt community engagement, and embed long-term PPI in our team to increase research impact. Our first step is to invite people with lived experience of mood disorders or taking lithium to a consultative focus group, to discuss potential research ideas based upon their personal experiences and interests.If you would like to get involved, please get in touch! teamlithiumgroup@newcastle.ac.uk

• Our paper 'Human brain 7Li-MRI following low-dose lithium dietary supplementation in healthy participants' was the most downloaded original research article in the Journal of Affective Disorders, 2024!

• Recent talks given by Dr David Cousins:  Lithium imaging development: Bipolar Conference Bangalore 2024, Lithium multisite imaging network development: WFSBP, Istanbul 2024, Low dose lithium detection: ISBD Iceland 2024.

• Dr Victoria Wing, Academic Clinical Fellow (ACF) - Winner of the Newcastle University Clinical Academic Trainee Symposium 2023 ACF Oral Presentation Prize for ‘Clinical correlates of brain lithium distribution in bipolar disorder: A 3D⁷Li magnetic resonance imaging study’.

• Dr Victoria Wing, Academic Clinical Fellow (ACF) - Selected to give an oral presentation at the Royal College of Psychiatrists Academic Faculty Meeting 2024 for ‘Human brain⁷Li-MRI following low-dose lithium dietary supplementation in healthy participants’.

• Dr Victoria Wing, Academic Clinical Fellow (ACF) - Recipient of the Royal College of Psychiatrist Academic Trainees Small Grant Award 2024 to fund Supplementary Lithium: Imaging, Peripheral Inflammation and Mitochondrial Function (SLIPI-M).
  

• Elliott Asprey, Undergraduate Medical Student - Received funding from both the Newcastle University Vacation Scholarship Scheme and the British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP) Summer Studentship award 2024 to work on the Lithium Dose Optimisation (LiDO) study, under the supervision of Dr Victoria Wing and Dr Oisín Kavanagh. This work was recently presented as a poster at the RCPsych Northern and Yorkshire Autumn Conference.

Other past talks given by Dr  David Cousins:

• Imaging the distribution and effects of lithium in the brain in BD. Society of Biological Psychiatry, New York 2018.
• How 7Li-MRI can help us understand the efficacy of lithium treatment. ISBD Annual Conference, Mexico City 2018.
• The development and application of 7Li-MRI to determine the distribution of lithium in the brain. European Psychiatric Association, Nice 2018.
• Advanced magnetic resonance studies in bipolar disorder. NIMHANS Summer Symposium, Bangalore 2018.
• The present and future use of lithium. APC Psychopharmacology Masterclass, Dubai 2019
• Multimodal and multinuclear lithium imaging in bipolar disorder RCPsych International Congress London July 2019
• Lithium augmentation: tortoise or hare?RCPsych International Congress2021
• Imaging brain lithium distribution and its tissue level effects in bipolar disorder. WPA 21stWorld Congress of Psychiatry October 2021
• Looking at lithium. British Association for Psychopharmacology– presentation in recognition of Senior Clinical Award to David Cousins 2022
• Multinuclear methods for clinical research – presentation to Philips satellite meeting ISMRM 8th May 2022
• How to use lithium. ENCP Barcelona 2023
• Lithium imaging: high and low, far and wide. ISAD Milan 2023