AstraZeneca Plc said today that SEROQUEL XR, the antipsychotic medication that is used to treat schizophrenia, received the Food and Drug Administration approval.

AstraZeneca, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, announced the FDA approved SEROQUEL XR (Quetiapine Fumarate Extended-Release Tablets) for the acute treatment of bipolar depression and mania. This is the first FDA-approved drug of this kind.

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depressive illness, is a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by extreme mood swings. Unlike normal ups and downs everyone goes through, the disease involves episodes of abnormally elevated mood medically referred to as mania or hypomania (literally, below mania). Bipolar condition affects an individual’s mood, energy and ability to function. An estimated 8 million adults in the United States are affected by the disease.

In the long term, people suffering from bipolar disorder “experience depressive symptoms three times longer than manic symptoms," according to Dr. Trisha Suppes, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University Medical Center and VA Palo Alto Health Care System.

As a result of the approval of the extended-release version of the bipolar-disorder drug Seroquel, “we have a once-daily treatment that has been proven to help control the depressive and manic symptoms of bipolar disorder," Dr. Suppes said.

The FDA approval for the once-daily treatment for bipolar mania, biopolar depression and mixed biopolar episodes was obtained after the results of a trial of Seroquel XR, which involved 316 patients with bipolar mania or mixed episodes with or without psychotic features.