• Psychopharmacology · Feb 2011

    Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study

    Sildenafil adjunctive therapy to risperidone in the treatment of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia: a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial.

    • Shahin Akhondzadeh, Raofeh Ghayyoumi, Farzin Rezaei, Bahman Salehi, Amir-Hossein Modabbernia, Azad Maroufi, Gholam-Reza Esfandiari, Mehrangiz Naderi, Fariba Ghebleh, Mina Tabrizi, and Shams-Ali Rezazadeh.
    • Psychiatric Research Center, Roozbeh Psychiatric Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, South Kargar Street, Tehran 13337, Iran. s.akhond@neda.net
    • Psychopharmacology (Berl.). 2011 Feb 1; 213 (4): 809-15.

    RationalIt has been suggested that phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors such as sildenafil may be effective in the treatment of negative symptoms of schizophrenia.ObjectiveThis study was designed to investigate the effect of sildenafil added to risperidone as augmentation therapy in patients with chronic schizophrenia and prominent negative symptoms in a double-blind and randomized clinical trial.MethodsEligible participants in the study were 40 patients with chronic schizophrenia with ages ranging from 18 to 45 years. All patients were inpatients and were in the active phase of the illness and met DSM-IV-TR criteria for schizophrenia. Patients were allocated in a random fashion: 20 to risperidone (6 mg/day) plus sildenafil (75 mg/day) and 20 to risperidone (6 mg/day) plus placebo. The principal measure of outcome was Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).ResultsAlthough both protocols significantly decreased the score of the positive, negative, and general psychopathological symptoms over the trial period, the combination of risperidone and sildenafil showed a significant superiority over risperidone alone in decreasing negative symptoms and PANSS total scores over the 8-week trial (between-subjects factor; F = 4.77, df = 1; P = 0.03; F = 5.91, df = 1, P = 0.02 respectively).ConclusionTherapy with 75 mg/day of sildenafil was well tolerated, and no clinically important side effects were observed. The present study indicates sildenafil as a potential adjunctive treatment strategy for treatment of negative symptoms of schizophrenia. This trial is registered with the Iranian Clinical Trials Registry (IRCT1138901151556N11).

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…