Abstract

Objective: Schizophrenia is usually characterized by abnormal social behavior, lack of insight, and positive and negative symptoms. While there is increasing evidence that atypical antipsychotics have advantages over conventional ones, few long-term studies have directly compared the atypical antipsychotics with each other. Therefore, in the present assessment, the efficacy and safety of aripiprazole had been compared with quetiapine.

Method: 50 schizophrenic patients entered into two comparable groups for participation in a twelve-week, double-blind study, for random assignment to quetiapine or aripiprazole. The main outcome scales included the Scale for Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and the Scale for Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS). Also, the Clinical Global Impressions-Severity Scale (CGI-S), the Simpson Angus Scale (SAS), and finally the schedule for Assessment of Insight (SAI) had been used as the auxiliary ones.

Results: While both of aripiprazole and quetiapine demonstrated important efficacy in alleviation of positive symptoms (p<0. 04 & p<0. 01, respectively), their efficacy was not so with respect to negative cluster of symptoms (p<0. 07 & p<0.06, respectively). CGI-S and SAI, as well, revealed significant improvement with aripiprazole (p<0.05 & p<0.05, respectively) and quetiapine (p<0.05 & p<0. 04, respectively) at the end of the assessment. In contrast, in neither of groups any significant increase in SAS was detectible.

Conclusion: Based on the outcomes of the current study, no significant difference was evident between aripiprazole and quetiapine regarding improvement of positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

Keywords: Aripiprazole, dopamine, quetiapine, schizophrenia, second generation antipsychotics, serotonin.

Graphical Abstract