Antipsychotic Polypharmacy at Higher Doses Does Not Increase Hospitalization Risk, Study Finds

Patients with schizophrenia appear to be at a lower risk of hospitalization for physical health issues when taking high doses of two or more antipsychotic medications concurrently (polypharmacy) than when taking just one antipsychotic medication (monotherapy) at the same dose, according to astudy published yesterday inAJP in Advance.“When patients were treated with high-dose antipsychotic monotherapy …, they had approximately a 20% higher risk of severe cardiovascular outcomes leading to hospitalization compared with periods when the same patients were treated with corresponding high-dose combination therapy,” wrote Heidi Taipale, Ph.D., of the University of Eastern Finland and colleagues.The study included data collected from 61,889 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia who were alive on January 1, 1996, and had received inpatient care, as documented in Finland ’s nationwide Hospital Discharge register. Taipale and colleagues tracked these patients up until December 31, 2017, or until they died, whichever occurred first. They specifically compared the patients’ nonpsychiatric and cardiovascular hospitalizations during periods when they were receiving a ntipsychotic polypharmacy versus monotherapy. The researchers also compared differences in outcomes according to antipsychotic exposure by further dividing the groups according to the following defined daily doses (DDDs):<0.4, 0.4 to<0.6, 0.6 to<0.9, 0.9 to<1.1, 1.1 to<1.4, 1.4 to<1.6, and ≥1.6. (...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: AJP antipsychotics cardiovascular hospitalization monotherapy nonpsychiatric hospitalization polypharmacy schizophrenia Source Type: research