Management of primary negative symptoms in schizophrenia: an one-year observational study

Negative symptoms represent a separate symptom domain, with respect to depression, neurocognition, and social cognition and have a strong direct and indirect impact on real-life functioning. Furthermore, negative symptoms that do not improve following antipsychotic treatment are an important diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. We conducted a 12-month-study open-observational study to evaluate the efficacy of some atypical antipsychotics on negative symptoms, according to the following recommendations of Consensus Development Conference Attendees. In our study, we evaluated in an open-label study the efficacy of some second-generation antipsychotics (clozapine, quetiapine, olanzapine, aripiprazole, paliperidone) in 42 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (DSM-5 criteria) with 'persistent negative symptoms'. We used different rating scales (PANSS, CDSs, BNSS, BPRS), but mainly we focused on the new Brief Negative Symptoms Scale (BNSS) for negative symptoms. Our total data indicate an overall statistically significant reduction in all scales, although not clinically relevant.