Page "Antipsychotic" Paragraph 52

In 2005 the US government body NIMH published the results of a major independent ( not funded by the pharmaceutical companies ) multi-site, double-blind study ( the CATIE project ).

This study compared several atypical antipsychotics to an older typical antipsychotic, perphenazine, among 1493 persons with schizophrenia.

The study found that only olanzapine outperformed perphenazine in discontinuation rate ( the rate at which people stopped taking it due to its effects ).

The authors noted an apparent superior efficacy of olanzapine to the other drugs in terms of reduction in psychopathology and rate of hospitalizations, but olanzapine was associated with relatively severe metabolic effects such as a major weight gain problem ( averaging over 18 months ) and increases in glucose, cholesterol, and triglycerides.

The mean and maximal doses used for olanzapine were considerably higher than standard practice, and this has been postulated as a biasing factor that may explain olanzapine's superior efficacy over the other atypical antipsychotics studied, where doses were more in line with clinically relevant practices.

No other atypical studied ( risperidone, quetiapine, and ziprasidone ) did better than the typical perphenazine on the measures used, nor did they produce fewer adverse effects than the typical antipsychotic perphenazine ( a result supported by a meta-analysis by Dr. Leucht published in Lancet ), although more patients discontinued perphenazine owing to extrapyramidal effects compared to the atypical agents ( 8 % vs. 2 % to 4 %, P = 0. 002 ).