Quetiapine efficacy equal to risperidone

A new study published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience (January 4) demonstrates that quetiapine (AstraZeneca's Seroquel) and risperidone (Johnson & Johnson's Risperdal) have equivalent efficacy in the treatment of patients with schizophrenia exhibiting predominately negative symptoms, however quetiapine showed superior tolerability, especially with respect to extrapyramidal symptoms.

Study investigator Michael Riedel of the Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, Germany, commented: "one of the key issues in treating patients with schizophrenia is achieving a good quality of life by balancing efficacy and tolerability of medication. Negative symptoms associated with schizophrenia are less responsive to treatment. This small, but tightly controlled pilot study shows that quetiapine and risperidone have the same efficacy in patients with schizophrenia exhibiting mainly negative symptoms, but only quetiapine shows a statistically-significant effect on treating alogia and affective blunting compared to baseline. Importantly, there are significant differences in the tolerability between both medications; quetiapine was superior in many tolerability parameters including EPS. To patients, a reduction in EPS really matters in terms of quality of life. Medication with less EPS therefore may help address patient compliance issues by achieving the best balance of treatment efficacy and superior tolerability."