. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 837 1. Early Stages of Schizophrenia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 839 2. Efficacy of Antipsychotic Drugs in First-Episode Schizophrenia . . . . . ...

Tardive dyskinesia (TD) usually appears after years of antipsychotic drug use and appears to be related to the total lifetime medication dose. In withdrawal-emergent dyskinesia (WE-D), which is considered to be a subtype of TD, dyskinetic symptoms often appear shortly after a rapid reduction in antipsychotic drug dose or sudden discontinuation of the drug. Supersensitivity psychosis, which is f...

Objective: To choose typical or atypical antipsychotic drugs for treatment of schizophrenic patients in a psychiatric hospital. Method: A standard method was used; this method considers 4 main evaluation criteria and 4 secondary criteria. The typical antipsychotic drug, perphenazine, was compared with the atypical antipsychotic drugs (olanzapine, quetiapine, risperidone, and ziprasidone). The m...

Effectiveness of currently available antipsychotic medications is far from satisfactory with many patients showing incomplete therapeutic response even after many trials with different antipsychotic drugs. Hence, there is an ongoing interest in searching for pharmacological mechanisms, which could potentiate therapeutic response to antipsychotic drugs and/or reduce its typical side effects. The...

At the end of this article, readers should be able to: 1. Describe the reasons for switching an antipsychotic. 2. Assess the optimum time to switch. 3. Recognize the best ways to switch. The need to switch from one antipsychotic drug to another is a frequent challenge in the long-term management of patients with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders, even when an antipsychotic that is e...

BACKGROUND The symptoms and signs of schizophrenia have been firmly linked to high levels of dopamine in specific areas of the brain (limbic system). Antipsychotic drugs block the transmission of dopamine in the brain and reduce the acute symptoms of the disorder. This review examined whether antipsychotic drugs are also effective for relapse prevention. OBJECTIVES To review the effects of ma...

Previous studies have reported that context can powerfully modulate the inhibitory effect of an antipsychotic drug on phencyclidine (PCP)-induced hyperlocomotion (a behavioral test used to evaluate putative antipsychotic drugs). The present study investigated the experimental conditions under which environmental stimuli exert their influence through associative conditioning processes. Experimen...

BACKGROUND A potential link between increase in total cholesterol and triglycerides and clinical improvement has been observed during antipsychotic drug treatment in chronic schizophrenia patients, possibly due to drug related effects on lipid biosynthesis. We examined whether changes in serum lipids are associated with alleviation of psychosis symptoms after one year of antipsychotic drug trea...