Prior studies have demonstrated the importance of treatment persistence with anti-psychotic agents in sustaining control of schizophrenic symptoms. However, the conventional approach in measuring treatment persistence tended to use only the first prescription episode even though some patients received multiple prescriptions (or multiple treatment episodes) of the same medication within one year...

Recent studies have demonstrated that atypical antipsychotic agents, which are known to antagonize dopamine D2 and serotonin 5-HT2a receptors, have immunomodulatory properties. Given the potential of these drugs to modulate the immune system both peripherally and within the central nervous system, we investigated the ability of the atypical anti-psychotic agent, risperidone, to modify disease i...

OBJECTIVE Potency equivalents for anti-psychotic drugs are required to guide clinical dosing and for designing and interpreting research studies. Available dosing guidelines are limited by the methods and data from which they were generated. METHOD With a two-step Delphi method, the authors surveyed a diverse group of international clinical and research experts, seeking consensus regarding an...

sudden, unexpected death may occur in apparently healthy individuals. its occurrence in psychiatric patients has raised the concern that the use of psychotropics, especially antipsychotics, may be associated with an increased risk of sudden death. this concern is maintained even though not all psychiatric patients who have succumbed to sudden death have been on psychotropics. early reports pres...

Antipsychotic medications are viewed as cornerstones for both the short-term and long-term treatment of schizophrenia. However, evidence on long-term (10 or more years) efficacy of antipsychotics is mixed. Doubleblind discontinuation studies indicate significantly more relapses in unmedicated schizophrenia patients in the first 6-10 months, but also present some potentially paradoxical features...