Doubling Up on Antipsychotics Useless

Prescribing more than one antipsychotic drug in an effort to help hard-to-treat schizophrenia appears to have no benefit and should be dropped from psychiatric practice, a Canadian-led international study concludes.
Up to one-third of schizophrenics continue to have disturbing symptoms such as auditory hallucinations even when receiving treatment, said Dr. William Honer of the University of British Columbia's department of psychiatry. The treatment of choice for such patients is usually the drug clozapine. "If symptom improvement is still limited, the psychiatrist may prescribe a second antipsychotic drug known as risperidone at the same time in an attempt to enhance the effects of clozapine," Honer, lead author of the study that included researchers from Canada, Germany, China and the United Kingdom, said in a release.

"Although this practice is fairly common, there was little evidence to indicate the value of this strategy, which is why we did our study."

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