Adult Psychiatric Unit: Schizophrenia

IMPORTANCE: Long-acting, injectable, second-generation antipsychotic medication has tremendous potential to bring clinical stability to persons with schizophrenia. However, long-acting medications are rarely used following a first episode of schizophrenia. OBJECTIVE: To compare the clinical efficacy of the long-acting injectable formulation of risperidone with the oral formulation in the early course of schizophrenia. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: A randomized clinical trial performed at a university-based research clinic, between 2005 and 2012...

A limited number of studies have evaluated sexual functioning in patients with schizophrenia. Most patients show an interest in sex that differs little from the general population. By contrast, psychiatric symptoms, institutionalization, and psychotropic medication contribute to frequently occurring impairments in sexual functioning. Women with schizophrenia have a better social outcome, longer lasting (sexual) relationships, and more offspring than men with schizophrenia. Still, in both sexes social and interpersonal impairments limit the development of stable sexual relationships...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVE: Treatment guidelines suggest distinctive medication strategies for first-episode and multiepisode patients with schizophrenia. To assess the extent to which community clinicians adjust their usual treatment regimens for first-episode patients, the authors examined prescription patterns and factors associated with prescription choice in a national cohort of early-phase patients. METHOD: Prescription data at study entry were obtained from 404 participants in the Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode Project's Early Treatment Program (RAISE-ETP), a nationwide multisite effectiveness study for patients with first-episode schizophrenia spectrum disorders...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The search for clinical outcome predictors for schizophrenia is as old as the field of psychiatry. However, despite a wealth of large, longitudinal studies into prognostic factors, only very few clinically useful outcome predictors have been identified. The goal of future treatment is to either affect modifiable risk factors, or use nonmodifiable factors to parse patients into therapeutically meaningful subgroups. Most clinical outcome predictors are nonspecific and/or nonmodifiable. Nonmodifiable predictors for poor odds of remission include male sex, younger age at disease onset, poor premorbid adjustment, and severe baseline psychopathology...

Guidelines for treating various conditions can be helpful in setting practice standards, but the presence of several sets of guidelines from different countries, experts, and settings, written at different times, can also create confusion. Here we provide a "guideline of guidelines" for the treatment of schizophrenia, or "meta-guidelines, which not only reconcile the various existing standards but also update them to include the use of several newer agents, most of which were marketed following the publication of existing standards...

Long-acting antipsychotic use in schizophrenia has become an advantage for treatment compliance and convenient administration of the drugs. There is no data on paliperidone palmitate (PP) use in pregnancy, which is the longest-acting (i.e., 1 month) atypical antipsychotic. In this case report, we aim to present a patient diagnosed with schizophrenia who had been using PP before and during her pregnancy until week 28 of gestation and gave birth to a male baby that weighed 3000 g at 39 weeks. As far as we know, this is the first case report on PP use during pregnancy...

OBJECTIVE: The impact of schizophrenia on vital diseases, such as chronic kidney disease (CKD), has not as yet been verified. This study aims to establish whether there is an association between schizophrenia and CKD. DESIGN: A nationwide matched cohort study. SETTING: Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 2338 patients with schizophrenia, and 7014 controls without schizophrenia (1:3), matched cohort for sex, age group, geography, urbanisation and monthly income, between 1 January 2003 and 31 December 2007, based on the International Classifications of Disease Ninth Edition (ICD-9), Clinical Modification codes...

It has been suggested that atypical antipsychotic drugs (A-APDs) other than clozapine may be effective to improve positive symptoms in some patients with treatment resistant schizophrenia (TRS), if both the dose is higher, and the duration of the trial longer, than those which have been ineffective in non-TRS (NTRS) patients. This hypothesis was tested with long acting injectable risperidone (Risperdal Consta®, RLAI). One hundred sixty TRS patients selected for persistent moderate-severe delusions or hallucinations, or both, were randomized to RLAI, 50 or 100mg biweekly, in a six month, outpatient, double-blind, multicenter trial...

BACKGROUND: Although clozapine is primarily used in a younger to mid-life population of patients with psychosis, there are limited data on the clinical pharmacology of clozapine later in life. The objective of this study was to assess the magnitude and variability of plasma concentrations of clozapine and norclozapine across the lifespan in a real-world clinical setting. DESIGN: A population pharmacokinetic study using nonlinear mixed effect modeling (NONMEM). Age, sex, height, weight, and dosage formulation were covariates...

OBJECTIVE: Schizoaffective disorder is a complex illness for which optimal treatment is not well established. Results of the first controlled, relapse-prevention study of paliperidone palmitate once-monthly injectable (paliperidone monthly) in schizoaffective disorder are presented. METHOD: The study was conducted between September 20, 2010, and October 22, 2013. Patients with schizoaffective disorder (confirmed by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders) experiencing acute exacerbation of psychotic and depressive/manic symptoms were stabilized with paliperidone monthly as monotherapy or as adjunctive therapy to mood stabilizers or antidepressants and randomly assigned (1:1) to paliperidone monthly or placebo in a 15-month, double-blind, relapse-prevention phase...

Many patients with schizophrenia have problems adhering to their medication regimen. Numerous factors affect patients' adherence, such as patient and illness characteristics; medication efficacy, tolerability and formulations; provider and system characteristics; and patients' support networks. To compound this problem, accurately measuring adherence is challenging. Data suggest that clinicians should use multiple methods to assess patients' adherence, including supplementing their own clinical judgment and patient reports with more objective measures...

IMPORTANCE: Antipsychotic drugs constitute the mainstay in the treatment of schizophrenia, and their efficacy is well established in hundreds of randomized clinical trials. However, it is not known whether they are effective or how effective they are across the wide range of baseline symptom severity. OBJECTIVE: To examine the influence of baseline severity of schizophrenia on the efficacy of antipsychotic drugs. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Meta-analysis of participant-level data from 3 pivotal randomized trials of acute schizophrenia (n = 611) and 3 pivotal trials in patients with predominantly negative symptoms of schizophrenia (n = 475)...

BACKGROUND: Public health considerations require that clinical trials address the complex "real-world" needs of patients with chronic illnesses. This is particularly true for persons with schizophrenia, whose management is frequently complicated by factors such as comorbid substance abuse, homelessness, and contact with the criminal justice system. In addition, barriers to obtaining health care in the United States often prevent successful community reentry and optimal patient management...

Today, clinicians have an array of antipsychotic medications to choose from in treating patients with schizophrenia, as well as a range of programs and services designed to improve cognition and real-world functioning. Yet, perhaps only a third of patients can successfully live in the community long-term and remain in remission. Treatment failure or a relapse after what appeared to be significant improvement in a patient's psychotic symptoms and functioning also affects families, employers, payers, policy makers, and huge swathes of the health care system...

BACKGROUND: In the UK and other high-income countries, life expectancy in people with schizophrenia is 20% lower than in the general population. AIMS: To examine the quality of assessment and treatment of physical health problems in people with schizophrenia. Method Retrospective audit of records of people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder aged ⩾18. We collected data on nine key aspects of physical health for 5091 patients and combined these with a cross-sectional patient survey...

BACKGROUND: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a medical treatment that is most effective for mood disorders (Bipolar Disorder and Major Depression). It has also been shown to be an effective treatment for schizophrenia accompanied by catatonia, extreme depression, mania and other affective components. ECT is currently under-used in many psychiatric settings due to its stigmatized perception by patients and mental health professionals. However, many unanswered questions remain regarding its role in the management of patients with schizophrenia...

Patients who present with a first episode of psychosis pose many challenges to psychiatry. While some morbidity from schizophrenia is probably not modifiable once acute psychosis has occurred, the best management of this stage of illness nevertheless holds the promise of improving long-term outcomes. We review the clinical literature on first-episode psychosis to derive clinical guidance with regard to timely diagnosis and optimal pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatment. We describe the illness course and the prognosis for this acute phase of illness and the immediate, postpsychotic period...

Whether or not QTc interval should be routinely monitored in patients receiving antipsychotics is a controversial issue, given logistic and fiscal dilemmas. There is a link between antipsychotic medications and prolongation of QTc interval, which is associated with an increased risk of torsade de pointes (TdP). Our goal is to provide clinically practical guidelines for monitoring QTc intervals in patients being treated with antipsychotics. We provide an overview of the pathophysiology of the QT interval, its relationship to TdP, and a discussion of the QT prolonging effects of antipsychotics...