New schizophrenia drugs might not be better
A study recently released by the National Institute of Mental Health said newer drugs used to treat adolescent schizophrenia might not be more effective than older drugs.
Published Sept. 19, 2008
New prescription drugs used to treat adolescent schizophrenia might not be more effective than older drugs, according to a government study released Monday.
The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, compared the effects of three drugs, most commonly used to treat schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder and psychosis in children and teenagers. Over the course of eight weeks, researchers measured the effect of the medicine on each of the 119 children and adolescents who participated.
"It doesn't look like the older medicines are less effective than the newer medicines," said University of North Carolina Professor Linmarie Sikich, one of the study's lead researchers. "The guidelines should be revised to say that an older drug is a reasonable choice."
Medicines used to treat mental disorders often have multiple, sometimes painful side effects, which doctors must balance with the drug's potential benefits when making a prescription decision.
"The most important thing we found is that we couldn't detect any difference in how well the three medicines got rid of symptoms," Sikich said. "They all significantly reduced symptoms very substantially, and they did so at pretty much identical rates."
The newer medications come with starkly different side effects. While the older drug, molindone, caused stiffness similar to Parkinson's disease as a side effect, newer medications olanzapine and risperidone caused participants to gain substantial weight, which might cause other long-term health issues.
The authors of the study hope to change the way children with schizophrenia are treated so each patient receives a drug that will help them with their unique situation. A child with a family history of diabetes, for example, would not be prescribed one of the newer drugs because they have been shown to cause weight gain and, in some cases, higher insulin levels.
"You don't just want a drug that has the fewest possible side effects," said Matthew Hile, a psychiatry professor at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health. "You want a drug that deals with the problem and has the fewest possible side effects."
Because of this, there is no way to say that one drug is better than the other, researchers say.
With new technology, drug companies hope to minimize side effects and create more potent drugs for individual situations.
"Every drug has a side effect of some sort, and so as medicine advances we of course look for perhaps newer therapeutics that we can more closely identify the specific type of person that something might work for over others," Eli Lilly spokesman Jamaison Schuler said.
Eli Lilly is a company that makes one of the newer drugs involved in the study.
"That's just generally the way the industry is moving," he said. "It's trying to ensure that drugs are more and more effective for the right people."
