The Effect of Clozapine on Self-reported Duration of Sleep and Its Interaction With 23 Other Medications: A 5-Year Naturalistic Study

Background Sedation is a common and incapacitating clozapine adverse effect, but the factors associated with sedation and its pharmacological management remain poorly studied. Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study based on deidentified electronic clinical records of clozapine-treated patients from the secondary mental health care provider for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, United Kingdom. We first evaluated cross-sectionally the influence of clozapine dose, clozapine, and norclozapine plasma levels on self-reported hours slept, as a proxy for sedation, using bivariate correlation and then the longitudinal effect of changes in clozapine dose and other 23 medications using linear mixed effect models. We followed 241 clozapine-treated patients for 56 months on average, with 2237 face-to-face assessments in total. Results Patients slept for a mean of 9.35 h/d, with 46% reporting 10 h/d or more. Cross-sectionally, sleep duration did not correlate with clozapine dose (r = 0.14, P = 0.106), but with clozapine plasma levels (r = 0.38, P
Source: Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Original Contributions Source Type: research