Efficacy and safety of quetiapine for depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia

✍ Scribed by Kyoung-Uk Lee; Yang-Whan Jeon; Hae-Kook Lee; Tae-Youn Jun

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 121 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6222
• DOI: 10.1002/hup.1047

✦ Synopsis

Objective:

To investigate the efficacy and safety of quetiapine for depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia.

Method:

Thirty-nine patients fulfilling dsm-iv-tr diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia and had depressive symptoms were studied in a prospective 6-week open-label design using quetiapine monotherapy. the brief psychiatric rating scale (bprs), 17-item hamilton depression rating scale (hamd-17), simpson-angus rating scale, and the barnes akathisia rating scale (bars) were used to assess patients at baseline, week 1, 2, 4, and 6.

Results:

Thirty patients (76.9%) completed this study. the dose of quetiapine at endpoint was 583 (+/-235 sd) mg/day. treatment with quetiapine was associated with significantly reduced depressive symptoms (hamd-17 total score and bprs depression/anxiety subscale) from the first week of treatment. changes of mean score from baseline to endpoint were 7.8 +/- 6.2 for hamd-17 total score and 3.4 +/- 3.6 for bprs depression/anxiety subscale (locf, n = 39, p < 0.001). quetiapine was well tolerated, with minimal extrapyramidal symptoms and non-significant increase in body weight (mean increase of 0.8 kg).

Conclusions:

While the interpretation of findings from the open-label design of this study warrants appropriate caution, the results suggest that quetiapine may be an effective and tolerable treatment for depression in patients with schizophrenia.