ORIGINAL ARTICLE   

Minerva Psichiatrica 2018 March;59(1):22-8

DOI: 10.23736/S0391-1772.17.01949-5

Copyright © 2017 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

The effect of adding buspirone to atypical antipsychotics in treating the negative symptoms of schizophrenic patients

Hatam BOUSTANI ¹, Sirus PAKSERESHT ¹, Mohammad-Reza HAGHDOUST ¹, Naghmeh MALEKPOOR ² ✉

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran; ² Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia is a specified mental disorder with severe problems. Negative symptoms are the most important symptoms of schizophrenia because they have the best predictability on disability and social performance of patients in the future. Based on different results on the effectiveness of buspirone on treating the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and because this medicine was less used in treating adjuvant with atypical antipsychotics, the present study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of adding buspirone to atypical antipsychotics in treating the negative symptoms of schizophrenic patients.
METHODS: This study was conducted as a double-blind clinical trial study on 40 patients with schizophrenia in psychiatric ward of Golestan Hospital, Ahwaz. The patients were randomly divided into two treatment groups of case (40 mg buspirone with atypical antipsychotics equal to 6-2 mg risperidone) and control (40 mg placebo with atypical antipsychotics equal to 6-2 mg Risperidone). The patients were evaluated at 3 and 6 weeks in terms of negative symptoms and total score of PANSS Scale with SPSS20 software.
RESULTS: The mean age of the patients was 33.73±7.94 and most of them were males (65%) and single (65%). In addition, the education level of most patients was diploma (27.5%) and most of them were unemployed (57.5%). Furthermore, the mean time of suffering the disease among all the patients was 8.33±3.87 years. The mean negative symptoms of the case group at the beginning of the study had no significant difference to the control group (32.50±4.51 vs. 31.60±4.93, P=0.55) and it was not significant in the third week (27.65±4.33 vs. 28.40±4.67, P=0.60). However, it was significantly less in the case group at the end of the sixth week (17.15±3.29 vs. 23.45±4.37, P=0.00). In addition, the general symptoms (26.60±5.20 vs. 40.35±6.73, P=0.00) and total score of the patients (60.50±9.87 vs. 83.30±9.29, P=0.00) in the case group was significantly less than the control group at the end of the sixth week.
CONCLUSIONS: Adding buspirone to atypical antipsychotics can reduce the negative symptoms, general symptoms, and total score of PANSS questionnaire after 6 weeks.

KEY WORDS: Schizophrenia - Antipsychotic agents - Surveys and questionnaires