Newer antipsychotics no better than older drug in treating child and adolescent sch...(s. The treatment groups did differ ...),Health

The treatment groups did differ in side effects. The children taking olanzapine gained about 13 pounds (6 kilograms) during the trial on average, while children taking risperidone gained about 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms), and those taking molindone did not gain weight. The olanzapine group also showed increases in cholesterol levels and other metabolic disruptions that may have become dangerous. The outcome prompted the safety review board to end the olanzapine arm of the study in 2006.

"Atypical antipsychotics are commonly used to treat kids with EOSS, but these results question the wisdom of that approach," said lead author Linmarie Sikich, M.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "They also remind us that we need to develop safer, more effective medications to treat these children, given the limited effectiveness of both the atypical and the conventional medications."

Study coauthor Jeffery Lieberman, M.D., of Columbia University Medical Center, noted that TEOSS is the first documented evidence of how newer antipsychotics compare to older ones when treating children and adolescents with schizophrenia. "Doctors need to educate families about the potentially serious side effects these drugs can have so that strategies can be put into place to address them," he reiterated. The TEOSS results are similar to those found in the NIMH-funded Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE), for which Lieberman was the principal investigator. CATIE found that the newer antipsychotics were no more effective than an older antipsychotic in treating adults with schizophrenia.

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