Comparison of antipsychotic treatments in adolescents with sch...( Philadelphia PA February 28 2008 Th...),Health
Philadelphia, PA, February 28, 2008 There is a wealth of scientific literature available on the treatment of adults diagnosed with schizophrenia. However, there is a paucity of data to guide the treatment of children and adolescents with schizophrenia. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently approved the use of aripiprazole and risperidone for adolescents with schizophrenia, few controlled data are available to help guide clinicians regarding the management of children and adolescents with schizophrenia who fail to respond to these standard 'first-line' antipsychotic treatments, according to Dr. Sanjiv Kumra. Dr. Kumra is one of the authors of a new study to be published in the March 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, which was undertaken to help fill this gap in knowledge.
The authors recruited 39 children, 10-18 years of age, who had already failed to respond to at least two antipsychotic treatments, to participate in a 12-week, double-blind, randomized study the most rigorous of clinical trial designs. After initial assessments, the patients received treatment with either clozapine or high-dose olanzapine (doses that exceed the package insert recommendations) and were monitored for improvement in their symptoms. The researchers discovered that clozapine was approximately twice as likely to produce a treatment response as olanzapine. Both positive symptoms (psychosis) and negative symptoms (blunted emotional response, reduced motivation) responded better to clozapine. John H. Krystal, M.D., Editor of Biological Psychiatry and affiliated with both Yale University School of Medicine and the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, comments on the findings: Olanzapine is among the most effective antipsychotic medications, so the distinctive effectiveness of clozapine in this study could be very important.
Dr. Kumra discusses this patient population: The majority of these youth had histories of multiple hospitalizati
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| Contact: Jayne Dawkins ja.dawkins@elsevier.com 215-239-3674 Elsevier Source:Eurekalert |
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