Early prediction of antipsychotic response in schizophrenia

The authors' goal was to examine the predictive value of early symptom changes indicating response to antipsychotic medication in schizophrenia.

One hundred thirty-one acutely ill patients with schizophrenia received 4 weeks of fluphenazine treatment. Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) ratings were obtained at baseline and weekly. The authors examined the relationship between changes in BPRS total score and each factor score following 1 week of treatment and ultimate response status, defined as a reduction of 20% or more in total BPRS score.

None of the patients who [corrected] displayed an improvement of less than 20% in total [corrected] BPRS score and only 5% [corrected] of the [corrected] patients who displayed a reduction of less than 20% in BPRS thought disturbance [corrected] score after 4 weeks of treatment had been classified as responders at 1 week (i.e., 100% and 95% specificity) [corrected]

These data suggest that patients with minimal improvement in positive symptoms during the first week of treatment with a typical antipsychotic are unlikely to respond to a 4-week trial. These data require confirmation and extension to studies with second-generation antipsychotics.