OBJECTIVE The incidence of neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) is not known, but the frequency of its occurrence with conventional antipsychotic agents has been reported to vary from 0.02% to 2.44%. DATA SOURCES MEDLINE search conducted in January 2003 and review of references within the retrieved articles. DATA SYNTHESIS Our MEDLINE research yielded 68 cases (21 females and 47 males) of N...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether the mental health accreditation program drives improvements in the clinical practice of giving pro re nata (PRN) antipsychotic medications for psychiatric inpatients. METHODS This study was conducted in October 2012, a record-based pre-post assessment design in psychiatric inpatient wards at King Khalid University Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Data collected...

BACKGROUND High dose antipsychotic prescribing is common in psychiatric care, despite a lack of its benefit from research evidence. While several studies have explored the prevalence and factors associated with high dose antipsychotic prescribing, no such report has emanated from a developing country like Nigeria. AIM The aims of this study were to determine the prevalence of high dose prescr...

The present study was designed to compare the effects of typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs on extracellular dopamine (DA) levels in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the nucleus accumbens (NAC), using in vivo microdialysis with dual probe implantation in awake, freely moving rats. Amperozide (2 and 10 mg/kg), clozapine (5 and 20 mg/kg), and olanzapine (10 mg/kg), all of which are a...

OBJECTIVES To determine the prevalence of antipsychotic use in care homes. To explore which behaviours care home staff can find difficult to manage and which non-pharmacological interventions are currently used within care homes to help cope with behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. METHOD A postal survey sent to all care homes registered as specialising in the care of older pe...

Antipsychotic drugs are the mainstay pharmacotherapy for schizophrenia and related psychiatric disorders. While the metabolic pathways of antipsychotic drugs have been well defined, the role of drug transporters in the disposition and effects of antipsychotic drugs has not been systematically explored. P-glycoprotein has ubiquitous expression in brain endothelial cells and plays a protective ro...

Background. Despite recommendations by guidelines to avoid combinations of antipsychotics unless after multiple trials of antipsychotic monotherapy, it is quite a common practice to use combinations. This practice leads to unnecessary expenses and exposes the patient to severe drug adverse effects. Methods. An institution based cross-sectional study was conducted from April to May 2014. Systema...

OBJECTIVE Inadequate response to clozapine treatment is frequently encountered in practice and augmentation strategies have been developed in an attempt to improve response. Aims of the study were to evaluate the therapeutic effect of adding an antipsychotic drug to clozapine treatment. METHOD Meta-analysis of randomized, placebo-controlled studies of antipsychotic augmentation of clozapine t...

Objective. Antipsychotics have been associated with increased cardiac events includingmortality.This study assessed cardiac events including mortality among antipsychotic users relative to nonusers. Methods. The General Practice Research Database (GPRD) was used to identify antipsychotic users, matched general population controls, and psychiatric diseased nonusers. Outcomes included cardiac mor...

A significant number of patients with schizophrenia do not respond adequately to an initial antipsychotic trial. As first step within a treatment algorithm for therapy-refractory schizophrenia 'pseudoresistance' should be ruled out (eg, re-evaluation of the diagnosis, comorbidities, compliance and adherence in terms of medication intake, adequate dose and treatment duration, and achievement of ...