title: The cognitive efficacy of atypical antipsychotics in schizophrenia.
abstract: Cognitive dysfunction, a symptom of schizophrenia, has been recently identified as an important measure of outcome in the treatment of this disorder. Drug-mediated symptom improvement, the traditional measure of treatment success for schizophrenia, typically fails to associate with modifications of cognitive dysfunction, resulting in a failure of the patient to reintegrate into society. A paradigm shift is now required in the conceptualization of treatment success away from symptom decrement and towards treatments that improve cognitive function. Clozapine treatment has been shown to provide a significantly greater improvement in several domains of cognitive function, especially attention and verbal fluency, compared with conventional neuroleptics, whereas risperidone appears to have a beneficial effect on working memory. These results may be because of the normalization of dopamine function by clozapine and antagonism of 5HT2 receptors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mockler
mesh_terms: D014150:Antipsychotic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D003071:Cognition / Q000187:drug effects*; D006801:Humans; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000188:drug therapy*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology
chemical_list: D014150:Antipsychotic Agents