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Cambridge University Press, Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 5(26), p. 462-465, 2017

DOI: 10.1017/s2045796017000245

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Antipsychotic combinations in schizophrenia

Journal article published in 2017 by C. Gastaldon ORCID, D. Papola ORCID, G. Ostuzzi
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

In the treatment of resistant schizophrenia, a number of meta-analyses attempted to quantify the efficacy and tolerability of antipsychotic (AP) polypharmacy v. monotherapy with contradictory results. Recently, a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials investigated the efficacy and tolerability of AP combination v. monotherapy in schizophrenia. It included 31 studies: 21 double-blind (considered high-quality studies) and 10 open-label (considered low-quality studies). The meta-analysis showed that, overall, the combination of two APs was more effective than monotherapy in terms of symptom reduction (standardised mean difference (SMD) = −0.53, 95% confidence interval (CI) −0.87 to −0.19); however, this result was confirmed only in the subgroup of low-quality studies. Negative symptoms improved when combining a D2 antagonist with a D2 partial agonist (SMD = −0.41, 95% CI −0.79 to −0.03) both in double-blind and open-label studies. In the present commentary, the results of this systematic review are critically discussed in terms of their clinical and research implications.