Efficacy of Long-Acting Injectable Antipsychotics in Adolescents

The number of long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAIA) has increased in recent years. The safety and efficacy of that treatment are not established in children. This study aims to address this gap of information by studying such treatments in a case series.

This retrospective chart review of patients identified by the investigators at an academic acute inpatient psychiatric unit included all patients from the past 24 months who required new initial treatment with LAIA. This study included a case series of the nine patients along with Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S) scores from admission and discharge and Clinical Global Impression-Improvement (CGI-I) scores. Other observations included the presentation of primary psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric and medical comorbidities, age, sex, previous and LAIA psychiatric medications, reasoning for LAIA treatment, adverse events, CGI-S and CGI-I scores, and outpatient resources utilized to continue treatment.

The case series included two females and seven males within the ages of 14-17 years. Of those patients, five were treated with paliperidone palmitate, one treated with risperidone, one treated with fluphenazine, and one treated with aripiprazole. Primary psychiatric diagnosis of the patients in the case series included five with schizophrenia, one with schizoaffective disorder, one with bipolar affective disorder-type I, one with bipolar affective disorder-not otherwise specified, and one with mood disorder-not otherwise specified. In all nine cases, noncompliance was a consideration in treatment with LAIA. Frequent running away and severity of illness were also considerations in one case each. All of the patients required community resources with injectable services.

This study describes initiation of treatment with LAIA in 14-17-year olds in an acute inpatient psychiatric unit with serious mental illness. This study also demonstrates the need for outpatient community resources with the ability to provide long-acting injectable medication. Limitations of this study include a small patient population, other factors changing CGI-S and CGI-I scores beyond the medication, and the nature of the study as a retrospective chart review. This study did not compare medications between each other. Maintenance dosing and long-term safety were beyond the scope of this study. Future directives for safety studies, open-label trials, and randomized double-blinded control trails in the pediatric population would be needed.