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Antipsychotic Drugs: Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutic Use

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Summary

No specific treatment of the schizophrenias and other psychoses was available until Laborit’s discovery of chlorpromazine as the first antipsychotic agent. Since then the introduction of widespread use of antipsychotic drugs has led to a marked reduction in the number of hospitalised shizophrenic patients. Hundreds of controlled studies have demonstrated the superiority of antipsychotic drugs over placebo in the treatment of schizophrenia.

Different classes of antipsychotic drugs are equally effective in the treatment of psychoses when administered in adequate doses, but they differ in range and severity of side-effects. For the average schizophrenic patient, mega doses of antipsychotic drugs do not produce greater improvement than conventional doses. The same dose of antipsychotic drugs leads to widely divergent drug blood levels in individual patients, due to differences in absorption, and rate of elimination of the drug.

Maintenance treatment with antipsychotic drugs reduces the relapse rate in schizophrenic patients.

Side-effects of antipsychotic drugs involve the autonomic nervous system and the cardiovascular system, as well as the CNS with the development of extrapyramidal symptoms; in addition skin and eye changes, as well as allergic and endocrine changes, occur. Late or tardive dyskinesia is an extrapyramidal syndrome which can occur after long-term antipsychotic treatment and may be reversible when recognised in the initial stages.

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  1. Illinois State Psychiatric Institute, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, 1601 West Taylor Street, Chicago, Ill., 60612, USA

    John M. Davis & Regina Casper

  2. Abraham Lincoln School of Medicine, University of Illinois, Illinois, USA

    John M. Davis & Regina Casper

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  1. John M. Davis
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Davis, J.M., Casper, R. Antipsychotic Drugs: Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutic Use. Drugs 14, 260–282 (1977). https://doi.org/10.2165/00003495-197714040-00002

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