Sixteen patients who had for some months been on fluphenazine enanthate injections (1-3 ml) every two or three weeks, with daily oral benzhexol (6-40 mg), were divided into two groups comparable in age, diagnostic category, and drug dose.Placebo was substituted under blind controlled conditions for benzhexol in one group, and both groups were regularly assessed by Simpson rating scale for extra...

Atypical antipsychotic drugs, which are distinguished from typical antipsychotic drugs by a lower incidence of extra-pyramidal side effects and less propensity to elevate serum prolactin levels (e.g., clozapine, olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, ziprasidone), have become the most widely used treatments for schizophrenia, although their precise mechanism of action remains controversial. It ha...

In recent years, antipsychotic medications have increasingly been used in pediatric and geriatric populations, despite the fact that many of these drugs were approved based on clinical trials in adult patients only. Preliminary studies have shown that the "off-label" use of these drugs in pediatric and geriatric populations may result in adverse events not found in adults. In this study, we uti...

Prion diseases currently have no effective therapy. These illnesses affect both animal and human populations, and are characterized by the conformational change of a normal self protein PrP(C) (C for cellular) to a pathological and infectious conformer, PrP(Sc) (Sc for scrapie). We used a well characterized tissue culture model of prion infection, where mouse neuroblastoma cells (N2a) were infe...

The ABC transporter genes CDR1 and CDR2 can be upregulated in Candida albicans developing resistance to azoles or can be upregulated by exposing cells transiently to drugs such as fluphenazine. The cis-acting drug-responsive element (DRE) present in the promoters of both genes and necessary for their upregulation contains 5'-CGG-3' triplets that are often recognized by transcriptional activator...

BACKGROUND While long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAIs) are hoped to reduce high relapse rates in schizophrenia, recent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) challenged the benefits of LAIs over oral antipsychotics (OAPs). METHODS Systematic review/meta-analysis of RCTs that lasted ≥ 6 months comparing LAIs and OAPs. Primary outcome was study-defined relapse at the longest time point; sec...

BACKGROUND Antipsychotics (APs) have been associated with risk of torsade de Pointes (TdP). This has important public health implications. Therefore, (a) we exploited the public FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) to characterize their torsadogenic profile; (b) we collected drug utilization data from 12 European Countries to assess the population exposure over the 2005-2010 period. MET...

Azole resistance in Candida albicans can be due to upregulation of multidrug transporters belonging to ABC (ATP-binding cassette) transporters (CDR1 and CDR2) or major facilitators (CaMDR1). Upregulation of these genes can also be achieved by exposure to fluphenazine, resulting in specific upregulation of CDR1 and CDR2 and by exposure to benomyl, resulting in specific CaMDR1 upregulation. In th...

Among drug-induced liver injuries (DILI), the cholestatic type is second in frequency (from 20 to 40%), most common hepatocellular variant (up 78%). For this reason, practitioners of various specialties, including neurologists and psychiatrists, do not monitor cholestasis parameters, injury with (DILIС) remains unrecognized. The urgency problem great, because deaths DILIС only slightly lower th...