I don’t mean to overwhelm you but a “new” drug has been released. It’s the second Risperdone injectable. With the real new drugs not making it past the trials, and many new drugs being injectables of old drugs I question that the research in schizophrenia is progressing forward but instead has stagnated. What are your thoughts?
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for god sac why …
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Iti-007 and min-101 look like they’ll be released. They’re a new type of med.
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I don’t believe it’ll stop anytime soon, but I do think we reached a stopping point
I’ll believe it when they have real names.
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They have real names now ! 
Google it.
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ITI-007’s name is Lumateperone, if I’m not mistaken
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& MIN-101 is Roluperidone
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OK I stand corrected.
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Thank you for the information.
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Bill Gates has a saying that people overestimate what will happen in 2 years, but underestimate what will happen in 10.
With Gates’ saying in mind, we may not have a lot of progress in the next 2 years (I hope I’m wrong), but we may have more progress in the next 10 years than expected.
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Thank you for the information.
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There is a lot of new research into neuroinflammation and schizophrenia, so hopefully some of that will prove enlightening. It’s hard waiting, though.
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The only cure that I know of would be a vaccine but that would rely on the pre-birth flu virus theory with the virus staying in the body and attacking generally later in life in a different form since the symptoms often don’t hit until the teens and 20’s although many of us report having trouble well before then. Gene therapy may work if you could change a large number of our genes without having other major consequences. I have seen evidence that stem cell therapy is no more than a drug like effect when they can’t find the cause of the disease which they don’t have in this case. What I’m afraid before they can truly move forward is why schizophrenia happens in the first place. Then we can talk cure. But the cure may need to occur well before the point most of us are at. So the new drugs at best are hit and miss. I hope the ones in the pipeline do better than what we have with fewer side effects.
I’ll be the first to admit that despite all the billions put into schizophrenia research, the end results of preventing and treating schizophrenia has been disappointing.
It is not about money. It is about two things: focus AND the existing regulation system. Schizophrenia is not even one single type of disease, in contrast to common understanding. And there is a trap around every corner. Right now if we donate ALL the money to one “classification” of schizophrenia for say 2-3 years we would resolve that ONE classification but then all the other classifications would go without funds. So if you look at the different types of schizophrenia, no one is getting enough to get a breakthrough. Unlike diabetes or heart disease that are unique diseases, schizophrenia is truly an individual disease. Sure one schizophrenia is coded the same as another schizophrenia but in reality when we get to the genetic coding the actual DNA make up they are not even related except that they showed up in the same approximate location (the brain).
Until we shift our thinking from universal disease thinking to individual DNA mess ups we will never “cure schizophrenia.” Individualized care right now is actually not even possible. The way drugs and therapies are approved is by getting a shoe box full of names of people with what we assume are all the same disease and then expose some to the magic treatment while leaving others to placebo or another relatively known treatment and then evaluate whether or not the new compound is safe and efficacious.
By definition if each schizophrenia is unique to a mix up in DNA how do we take a shoe box of one into the FDA and use the current rules to determine the value? We need to find UNIQUE drugs for each patient in such a way that it is financially worth it AND then change the rules to allow it to be used VERY hard to do. Sort of like allowing self-driving cars, it is a monumental issue from who is to blame in an accident to how do we stop the thing when the blue screen from hell hits several cars at one point do to some electrical weather mess up.
Schizophrenia is not a schizophrenia. It your schizophrenia or my schizophrenia and therefore needs MY unique treatment designed only for me to be able to fix it. Who is going to pay for it? Who is going to protect society from quacks claiming they can do it. Who is to blame when it doesn’t work? Is it that it worked fine but was too late or was it totally wrong?
We haven’t even figured what all the billions of genetic base pairs do for us, so how are going to fix the messed up ones without disrupting normal tissue because the same DNA mess up that caused your schizophrenia ALSO makes tissue in other organs and without more tissue the old will eventually age and die.
We are decades from curing schizophrenia BUT I bet we are only years from diabetes or heart disease.
Yes different treatments have different effects on different patients. And there is likely more than one cause (genetics, drugs, psychological and blunt force trauma, etc.) Some people can’t even be effectively treated with drugs. And others walk away after one “episode” (define that) and are OK. An interesting thing about the self driving car is what happens when the parts of the car ages. Surely that will cause an accident too. Just the same there’s a question of when an individualized cure would still work after the brain wears down and ages. A drug that works to an extent (I doubt that few of you have run across a drug that eliminated the problems altogether) causes side effects because the substance in the drug missing in the schizophrenic brain after the natural breakdown of food that helps with the symptoms has a chemical reaction with another part of the body causing problems with that body part. It’s nearly impossible to eliminate side effects. It is also literally impossible to avoid having to repetitively take the drug because once that substance is used up it’s gone and your body needs more. My best treatment (not a unique one because I still have problems) has caused a continual weight gain that is starting to make life with the drug almost as difficult as life without it. It’s obvious my medical provider pays little attention to my weight gain unless it’s very extreme because the treatment that works best for me causes it.
I will likely die young from the meds but likely would have died younger from the exhaustion caused by the disease itself without them because my mind was literally talking itself to death. I have PTSD along with my schizophrenia. My mind is full of sexual material when psychotic but if my life had gone a different way I may be talking more about telepathic communication because that was part of it too. It’s runs in my family and therefore it’s likely a DNA genetic type thing. I likely was also genetically weak enough to be affected by PTSD (and each illness aggravated the other) although I don’t know anyone in the family with that. (the extent of schizophrenia in my family is a family secret too. I have been told that after my Uncle died I am the only one now. I don’t believe that.)