Additional studies on side effects of melperone in long-term therapy for 1 to 15 years in psychiatric patients

The present study which reports on the hitherto longest continuous melperone treatment recorded in the literature, was conducted in order to reveal side effects of long-term melperone therapy. 17 female and 20 male patients, aged 33-97 years, most of them with the diagnoses: schizophrenia (11 patients), dementia organica (11 patients) and dementia senilis (11 patients) were treated with melperone (Buronil) in doses of 15--800 mg/day for 1 to 15 years. The patients were examined for clinical side effects, abnormal electrocardiograms and ophthalmological diseases as well as abnormal values in sedimentation rate, hemoglobin, leucocytes, creatinine, alanine-aminotransferase, gamma-glutamyl-transferase and bilirubin. Also the thymol reaction was done. The electrocardiograms and laboratory investigations were controlled by specialists in internal medicine and the eye diseases by an ophthalmologist. We did not find any severe side effects which could be related with any certainty to melperone therapy.