Antipsychotic News and Research

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Antipsychotics are medicines used to treat the symptoms of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder (sometimes called manic-depressive illness), anxiety disorders, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Sometimes medications are used with other treatments such as psychotherapy.

Antipsychotics could have a protective impact against SARS-CoV-2

Two studies led by the Mental Health Unit of the Virgen del Rocio University Hospital and involving researchers from the US conclude that antipsychotic drugs could have a protective effect against SARS-CoV-2. For this reason, patients treated with these drugs have a lower risk of becoming infected or suffer a milder form of the disease if they do become infected.

9 Apr 2021

Insomnia linked to more suicidal thoughts and disease severity in schizophrenia patients

Insomnia is a common problem in patients with schizophrenia, and a new study reinforces a close association between insomnia, more suicidal thoughts and actions and increased problems like anxiety and depression in these patients.

6 Apr 2021

Mice experiencing hallucination-like events provide clues to understand psychosis

The humble lab mouse has provided invaluable clues to understanding diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes to COVID-19. But when it comes to psychiatric conditions, the lab mouse has been sidelined, its rodent mind considered too different from that of humans to provide much insight into mental illness.

1 Apr 2021

Fluoxetine (Prozac) performs strongly in vitro against SARS-CoV-2 (including mutants)

Researchers from Finland, to expand on these studies, tested some of these drugs against the new SARS-CoV-2 variants. The study is published on the preprint server bioRxiv.

24 Mar 2021

Researchers study the effects of cocaine on patients diagnosed with schizophrenia

Alejandro Fuertes-Saiz, fourth-year Psychiatry intern at the Hospital Provincial de Castellón and doctoral candidate at the CEU Cardenal Herrera (CEU UCH) University of Valencia, along with his thesis directors, Gonzalo Haro and Ana Benito, have just published in journal Brain Science the final results of three year-long research where they have studied the effects of cocaine on patients diagnosed with schizophrenia or antisocial personality disorder.

10 Mar 2021

Structural insights into glycine transporter open new avenues to find effective psychiatric drugs

Glycine can stimulate or inhibit neurons in the brain, thereby controlling complex functions. Unraveling the three-dimensional structure of the glycine transporter, researchers have now come a big step closer to understanding the regulation of glycine in the brain.

4 Mar 2021

Study reveals information about risk genes in schizophrenia

Dr. Felix-Martin Werner, working at the Euro Academy Pößneck in Germany and Prof. Rafael Coveñas, working at the Institute of Neurosciences of Castilla and León, Salamanca in Spain, have been working on neurological and psychiatric disease for over ten years.

26 Feb 2021

Study explains why antipsychotic medications lead to weight gain, promote metabolic syndrome

Why do patients who receive antipsychotic medications to manage schizophrenia and bipolar disorder quickly gain weight and develop prediabetes and hyperinsulemia?

15 Feb 2021

Researchers identify protein sequences involved in SARS-CoV-2 infection

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was established that SARS-CoV-2 infects cells by binding to the human protein ACE2, which plays a role in regulating blood pressure.

12 Feb 2021

Researcher explores coercive measures used in Norwegian asylums

It’s easy to believe that society’s treatment of difficult, violent, and criminally mentally ill people has become more humane over time. But that’s not the case.

21 Jan 2021

New nasal spray delivers antipsychotic medication directly to the brain

A team of neuroscientists and engineers at McMaster University has created a nasal spray to deliver antipsychotic medication directly to the brain instead of having it pass through the body.

16 Jan 2021

Stem cell engineering used to identify gene signaling pathway linked to schizophrenia

Using human-induced pluripotent stem cells engineered from a single family's blood samples, a gene signaling pathway linked to a higher risk for developing schizophrenia was discovered by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

21 Dec 2020

UH researcher examines whether early drug intervention can curb weight gain in mentally ill children

A University of Houston pharmacological researcher believes that prescribing the drug Metformin for children and teens as soon as they are diagnosed with mental illnesses, like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, may save them from gaining an enormous amount of weight.

16 Dec 2020

Researchers identify potential drug target that may improve cognition in people with mental illnesses

More than a dozen drugs are known to treat symptoms such as hallucinations, erratic behaviors, disordered thinking and emotional extremes associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other severe mental illnesses.

3 Dec 2020

Parasite infection discovery could help develop treatments for neurological disorders

New research into how a common parasite infection alters human behavior could help development of treatments for schizophrenia and other neurological disorders.

16 Nov 2020

New evidence of neurobiological mechanism for hallucinations and delusions found

A new study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has found evidence of a potential neurobiological mechanism for hallucinations and delusions that fits within the hierarchical model of psychosis and can explain their clinical presentation.

9 Nov 2020

Delirium common after hospital discharge in critically ill COVID-19 patients

Anesthesiologist and other researchers from Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor, New York Medical College, Valhalla and Center for Consciousness Science, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, have reported a case series of critically ill coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients who have developed neuropsychological symptoms after having been discharged from the hospital.

8 Nov 2020

Hydroxychloroquine not associated with prolonged heart rhythm intervals in RA or lupus patients

New research presented at ACR Convergence, the American College of Rheumatology's annual meeting, discovers that use of hydroxychloroquine, a generic drug, does not cause any significant differences in QTc length or prolonged QTc, key measures of heart rate, in people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

6 Nov 2020

Study sheds new light on the biological base of psychotic symptoms

Anti-NMDAR encephalitis is an autoimmune brain illness that is often mistaken by a psychiatric disorder since it causes psychoses and other behaviour alterations. Despite having these similarities, the illness does not respond to common antipsychotic treatments.

30 Oct 2020

Study sheds light on the biological base of symptoms in autoimmune psychosis

29 Oct 2020