VA Study Shows Patients With Schizophrenia Least Likely to Discontinue Clozapine, LAI Antipsychotics

Patients with schizophrenia may be less likely to stop treatment if prescribed clozapine or the long-acting injectable (LAI) formulations of aripiprazole and paliperidone compared with oral olanzapine, reports astudy published today inAJP in Advance. The study made use of data from over 37,000 veterans“Randomized controlled trials are the gold-standard design used to test the efficacy of antipsychotics but only reflect effectiveness in patients who volunteer for such trials,” wrote Marc Weiser, M.D., of the Stanley Medical Research Institute and colleagues.Weiser and colleagues used the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) pharmacy and health databases to compare two outcomes associated with antipsychotic treatment: treatment discontinuation rates and psychiatric hospitalization rate. The analysis included 15 categories: patients taking one of nine oral medications (aripiprazole, clozapine, lurasidone, olanzapine, paliperidone, quetiapine, risperidone, ziprasidone, and oral first-generation antipsychotics), patients taking one of five LAI formulations (aripiprazole, fluphenazine, haloperidol, paliperidone, and risperidone LAIs), and patients receiving polypharmacy.The researchers compared all other medications to olanzapine since it had the lowest discontinuation rate in the seminal Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness schizophreniastudy in 2005.After adjusting for other factors, Weiser and colleagues found that five groups had a lower risk of t...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: ajp in advance antipsychotics clozapine long-acting injectables oral antipsychotics schizophrenia Source Type: research