BACKGROUND Users of typical antipsychotic drugs have an increased risk of serious ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. However, less is known regarding the cardiac safety of the atypical antipsychotic drugs, which have largely replaced the older agents in clinical practice. METHODS We calculated the adjusted incidence of sudden cardiac death among current users of antipsychotic d...

It is no longer tenable to attribute all the antipsychotic action of antipsychotic drugs to dopamine (DA) D2 receptor blockade and subsequent development of depolarization inactivation of the mesolimbic or mesocortical DA neurons. The chief evidence for this position is that clozapine (CLOZ) does not differ from typical antipsychotic drugs in these regards but is more effective than typical neu...

BACKGROUND Atypical antipsychotic agents are thought to be less likely than older typical agents to produce parkinsonism. This has not been well documented. We compared the risk of development of incident parkinsonism among older adults dispensed atypical relative to typical antipsychotics. METHODS Retrospective cohort study of all adults 66 years and older in Ontario. We used Cox proportiona...

Antipsychotics have provided a great improvement in the management of people with schizophrenia. The first generation antipsychotics could establish the possibility of managing many psychotic subjects in an outpatient setting. With the advent of the second (SGA) and third generation antipsychotics (TGA), other psychiatric disorders such as bipolar depression, bipolar mania, autism, and major de...

Timothy Bickmore

Following the introduction of first-generation antipsychotics (FGAs) in the early 1950s, there was a radical change in the therapeutic regimens for schizophrenia. However, it soon became apparent that these antipsychotic agents produced serious side effects including distressing and often debilitating movement disorders known as extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS). To prevent EPS, second-generation a...

ED FROM Erickson SC, Le L, Zakharyan A, et al. New-onset treatment-dependent diabetes mellitus and hyperlipidemia associated with atypical antipsychotic use in older adults without schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. J Am Geriatr Soc 2012;60:474–9. Correspondence to: Sara C Erickson, Sr. Outcomes Researcher, OptumRx, 2300 Main St. CA134-0404, Irvine, CA 92614, USA; sara.c.erickson@optum. comCorr...