Hey that’s good news.
Adjunctive treatment with the atypical antipsychotic pimavanserin ( Nuplazid , Acadia Pharmaceuticals) is associated with significant improvement in patients with schizophrenia who have predominantly negative symptoms, new research suggests
The randomized placebo-controlled trial included 403 stable schizophrenia outpatients with predominant negative symptoms who were randomly assigned to receive either once-daily pimavanserin (n = 201) or placebo (n = 202) as an adjunct to current antipsychotic treatment .
A greater improvement in the NSA-16 total score compared with placebo was observed in the patients who received the highest pimavanserin dose of 34 mg (–11.6 vs –8.5; unadjusted P = .0065, effect size = 0.34).
OK, but not a real large effect size.
Pimavanserin was well tolerated with high completion rates of approximately 86% in both the pimavanserin and placebo groups, and similar rates of adverse events between pimavanserin (39.8%) and placebo (35.1%).
The most frequent adverse events were headache (6.5% pimavanserin, 5% placebo) and somnolence (5.5% pimavanserin, 5% placebo). Serious adverse events, reported as worsening of schizophrenia, occurred in 2% of patients on pimavanserin and 0.5% of patients on placebo.
A phase 3 study will be launched in the next few months, Bugarski-Kirola said.
American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology (ASCP) 2020: Abstract 3002487. Presented May 30, 2020