Longer-Term Effectiveness and Tolerability of Adjunctive Open Lurasidone in Patients With Bipolar Disorder

To retrospectively assess lurasidone effectiveness/efficacy/tolerability in bipolar disorder (BD) patients.

Outpatients assessed with Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for BD Affective Disorders Evaluation received naturalistically administered (primarily adjunctive) open lurasidone while monitored at visits with the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for BD Clinical Monitoring Form.

Sixty-one patients (32 type I, 26 type II, 3 type not otherwise specified; mean ± SD age, 45.1 ± 14.0 years; 63.9% were female) received lurasidone with 3.1 ± 1.4 (≥2 in 88.5%, monotherapy in only 3.3%) other nonanxiolytic/hypnotic prescription psychotropics, started during syndromal depression in 57.4%, subsyndromal depression in 23.0%, and euthymia in 19.7%. Lurasidone was taken for median 126 days, with final dose 55.6 ± 30.8 mg/d. By final visit taking lurasidone, syndromal depression rate decreased by nearly one-half to 31.1%, and euthymia rate more than doubled to 42.6%, whereas subsyndromal depression rate was unchanged at 23.0%. Clinical Global Impressions-BD-Overall Severity improved significantly only in patients with baseline syndromal depression. Seventy-seven percent of patients discontinued lurasidone after median 103 days, because of adverse events in 54.1% (most often akathisia, sedation/somnolence, nausea, and weight gain), inefficacy in 16.4%, and other reasons in 6.6%; 12.1% had equal to or greater than 7% weight gain, and 3.3% developed hypomania. Limitations to this study were the open design and demographically homogeneous (relatively affluent, predominantly white female) small sample taking complex pharmacotherapy.

In American specialty clinic BD outpatients, adjunctive longer-term lurasidone commonly relieved syndromal depression and maintained euthymia, suggesting possible effectiveness/efficacy. However, lurasidone was discontinued in 54.1% because of adverse events, suggesting tolerability limitations in these challenging patients, nearly 90% of whom were already taking at least 2 other nonanxiolytic/hypnotic prescription psychotropics.