Loading...
Whether the likelihood of response to an antipsychotic drug in acute schizophrenia is related to the baseline severity of acute symptoms is unknown. Investigators in Japan conducted two participant-level meta-analyses of 6-week, industry-sponsored, clinical registration, randomized, placebo-controlled trials, which involved a total of 1086 patients.
One meta-analysis covered three studies of olanzapine or risperidone for inpatients with acute schizophrenia. The greater the severity of baseline scores for positive and negative symptoms, the more scores decreased with the antipsychotic drug compared with placebo. The score differences between drug and placebo at 6 weeks ranged from 9.5 points for initially mild symptoms to 24.0 for initially s…