A Study about Clinical Effect and Safety of Risperidone in Schizophrenic Patients: FuturCare 99 Project

Son, Jung Woo

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
This study was performed to investigate the clinical effect and safety of risperidone during the treatment of schizophrenia for 12 weeks.
METHODS
In the FuturCare 99 Project which had been organized by JanssenKorea for the purpose of improving the quality of management of patients treated with risperidone, 714 schizophrenic patients from 32 institutes including general hospitals and private clinics were recruited. The clinical effects and extrapyramidal symptoms at 8-week and 12-week during the treatment with risperidone were evaluated using CGI, Modified Psychosis Symptom Evaluation and Extrapyramidal Symptom Legend. The associations between clinical responses and the sociodemographic and clinical informations were explored.
RESULTS
Most of symptoms assessed by Modified Psychosis Symptom Evaluation and CGI were significantly improved at 8-week and 12-week trial of risperidone. And the extrapyramidal symptoms were on the decrease during the treatment with risperidone. Moreover, there was no difference in the dosage of risperidone between at 8 weeks (4.3+/-2.1 mg) and at 12 weeks (4.4+/-2.3 mg). When the patients were divided into 3 groups by the clinical responses of CGI at 12 week of risperidone treatment, clincal characteristics such as age, duration of illness, auditory hallucination, erotic delusion, lack of motivation, disorientation, and memory problem were significantly different among groups.
CONCLUSION
his multicenter open study shows that risperidone has good clinical effect and safety in the treatment of schizophrenia with the daily average doses of 4.3-4.4 mg. The multicenter open study about the long-term treatment of risperidone in schizophrenia would be needed.