OBJECTIVE When a schizophrenia patient has an inadequate response to treatment with an antipsychotic drug, it is unclear what other antipsychotic to switch to and when to use clozapine. In this study, the authors compared switching to clozapine with switching to another atypical antipsychotic in patients who had discontinued treatment with a newer atypical antipsychotic in the context of the Cl...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to improve physicians' understanding of the treatment circumstances and needs of outpatients with schizophrenia at risk of nonadherence, by naturalistically assessing antipsychotic treatment patterns, clinical outcomes, and health care service use in this little-studied patient population. METHODS In this one-year, prospective, multicenter, noninterventional, obser...

INTRODUCTION Guidelines for the treatment of psychoses recommend antipsychotic monotherapy. However, the rate of antipsychotic polytherapy has increased over the last decade, reaching up to 60% in some settings. Studies evaluating the costs and impact of antipsychotic polytherapy in the health system are scarce. OBJECTIVE To estimate the costs of antipsychotic polytherapy and its impact on pu...

BACKGROUND The association between antipsychotic use and the risk of stroke in schizophrenic patients is controversial. We sought to study the association in a nationwide cohort with schizophrenia. METHODS Using a retrospective cohort of patients with schizophrenia (N = 31,976) derived from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, 802 new-onset cases of stroke were identified w...

OBJECTIVE Although antipsychotic polypharmacy is being prescribed with increasing frequency, few studies have described patient characteristics and treatment patterns associated with long-term use of this treatment strategy. METHODS By using data from the National Psychosis Registry of the Department of Veterans Affairs, 5,826 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder who receiv...

Clinical observations indicate that antipsychotic action starts early and increases in magnitude with repeated treatment. Animal models that faithfully capture this time course of action are few. Inhibition of hyperlocomotion induced by amphetamine or phencyclidine has been widely used as a screening tool for the antipsychotic activity of a drug. We thus investigated whether repeated antipsycho...

Antipsychotic drugs are among the most widely prescribed psychotropic medications for elderly people, particularly for the 5–8% of patients who are in institutions. The antipsychotics are indicated for treating psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, delusional disorder, psychotic symptoms in mood disorders and for a number of organic psychoses. Behavioural and psychological symptoms in d...

OBJECTIVE Although the standard of treatment for schizophrenia is antipsychotic monotherapy, overall psychotropic polypharmacy including antipsychotic polypharmacy is increasingly practiced by clinicians. However, there are very few studies that assess the prescription patterns of psychotropic drugs for patients with schizophrenia in Korea. The objective of this study is to describe changes in ...

Because adenine is effective for managing cases of radiation-induced and drug-induced leukopenia, it may be effective in cases of antipsychotic-induced leukopenia and neutropenia. Here, we report our experience with patients with leukopenia and neutropenia caused by an antipsychotic overdose or discontinuation of lithium carbonate, in whom adenine administration ameliorated the white blood cell...