Silent thyroiditis associated with short-term lithium therapy.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Tetsuro Ohmori.
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OBJECTIVE: The authors investigated the effects of atypical antipsychotic drugs-olanzapine, perospirone, and quetiapine-on plasma homovanillic acid (pHVA) in male patients with chronic schizophrenia. METHODS: In this prospective, open-label study, the subjects were 30 inpatients who were diagnosed according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, criteria for schizophrenia. The authors switched patients from typical antipsychotic drugs to olanzapine, perospirone, or quetiapine. Each patient gave informed consent for the research. pHVA was assessed before and after switching medications. RESULTS: After the switch, the authors found a significant improvement in psychotic symptoms, nonsignificant improvement in extrapyramidal symptoms, and a nonsignificant reduction in pHVA. In addition, the baseline pHVA correlated positively with the score changes from baseline in the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) total, positive, and negative symptoms in the group with a whole sample and in the olanzapine-treated group, and with the score changes in the BPRS total and positive symptoms in the quetiapine-treated group. CONCLUSION: Our findings indicated that the preswitching pHVA levels could be used to predict changes in the psychotic symptoms of male patients with chronic schizophrenia when switching to atypical antipsychotic drugs.
OBJECTIVES: We investigated the effects of a switch from typical to atypical antipsychotic drugs (olanzapine, n=8; perospirone, n=9; or quetiapine, n=13) on quality of life and hypothalamo-pituitary-gonadal axis hormones. METHODS: The subjects were 30 male chronic schizophrenia inpatients. The assessment was done before and after the switch. RESULTS: After the switch, (i) scores of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale total and three factors (anxiety-depression, anergia, and thought disturbance) decreased, (ii) the overall severity score of the Drug Induced Extra-Pyramidal Symptoms Scale tended to decrease, (iii) prolactin decreased but gonadal hormones remained unchanged, and (iv) scores on all three subscales (psychosocial, motivation/energy, and symptoms/side effects) in the Japanese version of the Schizophrenia Quality of Life Scale (JSQLS) decreased. However, there were no significant group effects, or time-by-group interactions. In addition, score changes from baseline in psychosocial and motivation/energy subscales in the JSQLS were correlated with those in psychotic symptoms, particularly in the anxiety-depression factor. Moreover, responders had been taking lower doses of typical antipsychotic drugs, and had higher serum estradiol concentrations than non-responders before the switch. CONCLUSIONS: The study indicated that the switch to atypical antipsychotic drugs was effective in reducing elevated prolactin without affecting the gonadal hormones and in improving quality of life patients who had been treated with typical antipsychotic drugs.