• O Guillin.
• CHU de Rouen, centre hospitalier du Rouvray, université de Normandie, Inserm U1245, 4, rue Paul-Eluard, 76300 Sotteville-lès-Rouen, France.
• B Acad Nat Med Paris. 2020 Dec 1; 204 (9): 1043-1046.

AbstractAntipsychotic drugs are one of the oldest drugs that can change the brain activity. These drugs are mainly used in schizophrenia and the first drug that was judged as efficacious in the treatment of psychosis has been chlorpromazine. This is a decade later that it has been shown that these drugs were antagonists at the dopamine transmission by blocking the dopamine D2/D3 receptors. Several other pharmacological targets have been tested during the last decades as glutamatergic, serotoninergic, cholinergic and neuropeptidergic agents but none has been shown to improve symptoms of schizophrenia. Three main issues could explain this failure: the exact causes of schizophrenia is still unknown, we still used the idea that one drug could improve all the symptoms of schizophrenia and it is clear that the group of schizophrenics disease could be different disease with different causes. We propose to review the different drugs that have been tested and we will discuss why the most recent genetic studies could help us to propose new pharmacological targets to treat schizophrenia.© 2020 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS on behalf of l'Académie nationale de médecine.

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