BACKGROUND Schizophrenia is a costly and complicated disorder to treat. A variety of schizophrenia treatment guidelines have been developed to provide valuable expert advice to practicing psychiatrists on various treatment options that are presumed to result in the best outcomes. However, examination of antipsychotic medication use patterns has suggested that current prescribing practices do no...

Authors' objectives The main objectives were to assess the clinical effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of 'atypical' antipsychotic drugs in schizophrenia in comparison with conventional antipsychotic drugs, placebo and other atypical antipsychotic drugs. The secondary objectives of the review were to investigate response in those with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, with predominan...

BACKGROUND Antipsychotic medications are increasingly used during pregnancy. Nevertheless, fetal risks are still not fully studied. It is currently unclear whether the antipsychotic treatment might induce a higher risk of fetal death. We aimed to determine if use of antipsychotic medication during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of spontaneous abortion or stillbirth. METHODS In...

BACKGROUND Antipsychotic therapy is widely used to treat behavioral problems in older adults with dementia. Cohort studies evaluating the safety of antipsychotic therapy generally focus on a single adverse event. We compared the rate of developing any serious event, a composite outcome defined as an event serious enough to lead to an acute care hospital admission or death within 30 days of init...

BACKGROUND Combined use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and antipsychotics in acute phases of schizophrenia remains controversial and inadequately investigated. AIM This study tried to examine whether the ECT-antipsychotic combination was more efficacious than antipsychotic drugs used alone in the acute phase treatment of schizophrenia, by way of an open review and an exploratory meta-anal...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate maternal medical and perinatal outcomes associated with antipsychotic drug use in pregnancy. DESIGN High dimensional propensity score (HDPS) matched cohort study. SETTING Multiple linked population health administrative databases in the entire province of Ontario, Canada. PARTICIPANTS Among women who delivered a singleton infant between 2003 and 2012, and who were el...

OBJECTIVE Up to 40% of patients with schizophrenic psychoses have symptoms that are resistant to monotherapy with antipsychotic drugs. In consequence, combinations of drugs are often used, especially based on the antipsychotic agents clozapine and olanzapine because of their broad receptor-interaction profile. The aim of this review was to provide a critical overview of the published results of...

BACKGROUND Evidence suggests that there is an association between antipsychotic drugs and new-onset diabetes, but little is known about the risk of hyperglycemia among persons with preexisting diabetes. METHODS Using a nested case-control design and population-based health databases in Ontario, Canada, persons aged 66 years or older with diabetes who started treatment with an antipsychotic dr...

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...