Covariance of positive and negative symptoms during neuroleptic treatment in schizophrenia: a replication.

Although poor response to neuroleptics has traditionally been considered a characteristic feature of negative schizophrenic symptoms (Crow 1980; Andreasen et aJ 1982), several recent studies have documented significant improvement in negative symptoms in schizophrenic patients treated with neuroleptics (Breier et al 1987; vanKammen et al 1987; Kay and Singh 1989; Tendon et al 1990; Meltzer, 1990, Serban et al 1992). The question of whether neuroleptic-induced improvement in negative symptoms is linked to concomitant improvement in positive symptoms (vanKammen et al 1987; Tendon et al 1990; Meltzer 1990) or occurs independently of such improvement (Breier et al 1987; Serban et al 1992) is unresolved. This issue has obvious pathophysiological and therapeutic relevance. in a previous study (Tendon et al 1990), we had observed a significant improvement in negative symptoms with four weeks of neuroleptic treatment in a sample of forty schizophrenic inpatients; a significant correlation between change in positive and negative symptoms was also noted, in an effort to replicate these findings and further evaluate to covariance of positive and neg, ative symptoms in the course of initial neuroleptic treatment, we assessed positive ~nd negative symptoms in another nonoveflapping sample of 80 schizophrenic inpatients at drug-free baseline and four weeks after clinically determined neuroleptic treatment.