http://www.latimes.com/features/health/l...age=1&track=rss Quote: Mounting research has made clear that the atypical antipsychotics are not only less safe than originally thought; they are not, on balance, any safer or more effective than older drugs for schizophrenia. And for the population of depressed or anxious patients that some are now proposed to treat, studies suggest the benefits are extremely modest.And while all the antipsychotics are associated with weight gain, it was more frequent and more likely to be extreme among patients taking atypicals -- leading many to develop diabetes.Last December, the British journal Lancet published a comprehensive analysis that further punctured the new drugs' claims to superiority. A separate study found Seroquel by many measures to be no more effective in treatment of schizophrenia symptoms than Haldol. And a 2008 study on Abilify found it was little better at banishing depressive symptoms than a placebo."The results are extremely unimpressive," said Dr. Daniel Carlat, a Massachusetts psychiatrist who publishes a respected monthly report on psychiatric research. "They just squeak by."
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Important Read about Atypical Antipsychotics....
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>>>Seroquel has been linked to weight gain extreme enough to cause diabetes and to an often irreversible disorder characterized by involuntary tics and jerking movements.<<<
Seroquel and Haldol........I wouldnt wanna take those ever again.
>>>The first-generation antipsychotics could be highly effective at taming hallucinations and delusions. But some studies indicated that as many as 1 in 5 who took them developed involuntary tics and muscle movements called tardive dyskinesia, a condition that frequently cannot be reversed.<<<
I was the 1 in 5.......who got the tics and jerky movements :frowning: Its good I dont have the tics anymore :grin: thanks to other drugs I took to reverse the effects of Haldol immediately.
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As often happens, a reporter has taken scientific articles and stretched them further than they really go.
The problem is, the term 'atypical' of antipsychotics doesn't really identify a specific group of similar compounds. It was first used of clozapine, simply because it didn't fit into the chemical groups of the earlier phenothiazine antipsychotics and slightly later butyrophenone antipsychotics. These older drugs can greatly help people with psychosis, but the serious movement disorder side-effects make them unusable at a really effective dose level for about 50% of patients (not one in five). Clozapine acts at the D4 dopamine receptor rather than D2, and the risk of movement disorder side-effects is very low. Unfortunately for 1-2% of patients a different side-effect, very low white blood cell count, occurs.
More recent antipsychotics than clozapine - such as quetiapine (Seroquel) and aripiprazole (Abilify) - are also neither phenothiazines nor butyrophenones, and so have also been called 'atypical' antipsychotics; but they are not chemically similar to clozapine, and they do have some significant D2 activity. It would not be so surprising if some of these drugs turned out to be little better than the old ones. However it is not possible to extrapolate from one 'atypical' antipsychotic to others, because they are not chemically similar. I think it is notable that neither of the studies looked at clozapine at all, which I think may still be the best choice for most people.