The introduction of the atypical antipsychotic drugs represents an important advance in the treatment of schizophrenia, because the therapeutic efficacy, tolerability, and safety profiles of these agents seem to be superior to that of the classical neuroleptics. As would be predicted from the pharmacologic profile of a pure D(2)/D(3) receptor blocker, amisulpride is an atypical antipsychotic ag...

Amisulpride, a benzamide derivative, is an antipsychotic drug with a pharmacological profile distinct from that of classical neuroleptics such as haloperidol and from that of another benzamide, remoxipride. In mice, amisulpride antagonized hypothermia induced by apomorphine, quinpirole or (+/-) 7-hydroxy-2-(di-n-propylamino)-tetralin, an effect involving D2/D3 receptors, at similar doses (ED50 ...

BACKGROUND Atypical antipsychotics are widely used in the treatment of bipolar disorders. Amisulpride is an atypical antipsychotic that has been proven to be effective in treatment of schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and, more recently, acute mania. At the moment, however, no study has assessed the effectiveness of this compound in maintenance therapy of bipolar disorders. The purpose o...

OBJECTIVE The "atypical" profile of the new antipsychotics clozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine, and risperidone has been linked to combined antagonism of serotonin 2 (5-HT(2)) and dopamine 2 (D(2)) receptors. Although amisulpride is a highly selective D(3)/D(2) receptor antagonist, it is assumed to have atypical properties as well. The purpose of this article was to compare the atypical profile o...

UNLABELLED Amisulpride appears to be an effective agent for treating positive or negative symptoms of schizophrenia, depending on dose. The aim of this study was to assess striatal dopamine D(2) receptor availability by means of (123)I-iodobenzamide (IBZM) SPECT in patients treated with high and low doses of this atypical antipsychotic drug. METHODS Twenty-nine patients (19 men and 10 women, ...

Acute pancreatitis, neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) and epileptic seizures are all known to be rare complications of clozapine-treatment (Steinert et al. 2011, Tenner 2014, Belvederi Murri et al. 2015). For amisulpride, only seven cases with NMS (Belvederi Murri et al. 2015) including one case with seizures (Musshoff et al. 2013) have been described yet. Recently, via a German pharmacovigi...

BACKGROUND Amisulpride is a potent substituted benzamide antipsychotic drug claimed to improve the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, particularly at low dosage. METHOD Sixty long-term in-patients with schizophrenia and selected for predominant negative symptoms were randomised to receive either haloperidol or amisulpride. Over a year there was systematic dose reduction, as symptoms allowed....

Objective(s): Targeting the neuropeptide systems has been shown to be useful for the development of more effective antipsychotic drugs. Neurotensin, an endogenous neuropeptide, appears to be involved in the mechanism of action of antipsychotics. However, the available data provide conflicting results and the mechanism(s) by which antipsychotics affect brain neurotensin neurotransmission have no...

Hyperprolactinaemia is an important but neglected adverse effect of antipsychotic medication [1]. It occurs frequently with conventional antipsychotics and some atypical antipsychotics (risperidone and amisulpride). We found hyperprolactinaemia in all 10 patients evaluated during therapy with low doses (50 mg per day) of amisulpride used as an augmentation to antidepressant treatment, benzodiaz...