Rocío Pérez‐Iglesias

BACKGROUND: Psychotic disorders are associated with widespread reductions in white matter (WM) integrity. However, the stage at which these abnormalities first appear and whether they are correlates of psychotic illness, as opposed to an increased vulnerability to psychosis, is unclear. We addressed these issues by using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to study subjects at ultra high risk (UHR) of psychosis before and after the onset of illness. METHODS: Thirty-two individuals at UHR for psychosis, 32 controls, and 15 patients with first-episode schizophrenia were studied using DTI. The UHR subjects and controls were re-scanned after 28 months. During this period, 8 UHR subjects had developed schizophrenia. Between-group differences in fractional anisotropy (FA) and diffusivity were evaluated cross sectionally and longitudinally using a nonparametric voxel-based analysis. RESULTS: At baseline, WM DTI properties were significantly different between the 3 groups (P < .001). Relative to controls, first-episode patients showed widespread reductions in FA and increases in diffusivity. DTI indices in the UHR group were intermediate relative to those in the other 2 groups. Longitudinal analysis revealed a significant group by time interaction in the left frontal WM (P < .001). In this region, there was a progressive reduction in FA in UHR subjects who developed psychosis that was not evident in UHR subjects who did not make a transition. CONCLUSIONS: People at UHR for psychosis show alterations in WM qualitatively similar to, but less severe than, those in patients with schizophrenia. The onset of schizophrenia may be associated with a progressive reduction in the integrity of the frontal WM.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to compare an early behavioral intervention (EBI) with nonstructured standard physical care (routine care intervention [RCI]) in preventing antipsychotic-induced weight gain in drug-naive first-episode psychosis patients. METHOD: Sixty-one patients with a DSM-IV-diagnosed psychotic disorder were first randomly assigned to 3 different antipsychotic treatments (risperidone [N = 23], olanzapine [N = 18], and haloperidol [N = 21]) and subsequently randomly assigned to the intervention condition (EBI, N = 35) or RCI (N = 27). EBI was specifically designed to teach strategies to enhance control over factors associated with antipsychotic-induced weight gain and consisted of 8 flexible intervention modules that incorporated behavioral interventions, nutrition, and exercise. In the RCI group, patients were informed about potential weight gain and advised to increase their exercise and limit food intake. Body weight and body mass index were measured at baseline and then weekly for 3 months. In addition to change in weight and body mass index, a third outcome measure was the proportion of patients who had gained more than 7% of their body weight at 3 months. Participating patients were referred between August 2002 and September 2004. RESULTS: All 61 participants completed the study. Patients in the EBI group gained significantly less weight (mean = 4.1 kg, SD = 4.0) than those allocated to the RCI group (mean = 6.9 kg, SD = 4.5) (p < .01) during the 3-month follow-up period. Similar findings were obtained when both groups were compared on treatment-induced change in body mass index, which was significantly less in the EBI group than in the RCI group (1.40 vs. 2.39 kg/m2) (p < .01). Accordingly, significantly fewer patients in the EBI group (N = 11; 39.3%) than in the RCI group (N = 26; 78.8%) (p < .002) increased their baseline weight by more than 7%, the cutoff for clinically meaningful weight gain. CONCLUSIONS: EBI was effective in attenuating antipsychotic-induced weight gain in a drug-naive first-episode psychosis cohort. Patients displayed good adherence to this type of preventive intervention.

OBJECTIVE: Randomized controlled drug trials have demonstrated that antipsychotic medication is effective to rapidly improve psychotic symptomatology in first-episode psychosis. However, these results may not be generalizable to routine clinical practice. We evaluated the effectiveness, tolerability, and safety of olanza-pine, risperidone, and haloperidol in individuals with first-episode nonaffective psychosis who are representative of clinical practice and who are treated in routine clinical settings. METHOD: 172 patients participated in a practical clinical trial and were randomly assigned to haloperidol (N = 56), risperidone (N = 61), and olanzapine (N = 55). The mean modal daily doses were 5.4 mg/day for halo-peridol, 4 mg/day for risperidone, and 15.3 mg/day for olanzapine; 98.3% of subjects were drug naive at baseline. Data from clinical measures of treatment response and tolerability and safety data from the 6-week acute phase of a large epidemiologic and longitudinal (February 2001 to February 2005) intervention program of first-episode psychosis (schizophrenia spectrum disorders, DSM-IV criteria) are reported. RESULTS: All 3 treatments showed similar effectiveness in reducing the severity of general, negative, and positive symptomatology after 6 weeks of treatment, as reported by mean change in total Clinical Global Impressions-Severity of Illness scale, Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms, and Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms scores between baseline and 6 weeks. The proportion of study subjects responding, defined as 40% or greater BPRS total score improvement from baseline, was 57.1% (N = 32 of 56) haloperidol, 52.5% (N = 32 of 61) risperidone, and 63.6% (N = 35 of 55) olanzapine, with no statistical differences among groups. The frequency of extrapyramidal symptoms (chi(2) = 24.519; p < .001) and concomitant anticholinergic medication use (chi(2) = 57.842; p < .0001) was greater with haloperidol than olanzapine or risperidone. Olanzapine-treated patients had significantly more weight gain compared with the haloperidol and risperidone groups (p < .001). CONCLUSION: Relatively low doses of haloperidol, risperidone, and olanzapine are equally effective for the acute treatment of first-episode nonaffective psychosis under usual conditions of real clinical practice.