Psycho-Babble Medication | about biological treatments | Framed
This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | List of forums | Search | FAQ

Re: How long for Clozapine trial?

Posted by med_empowered on August 14, 2005, at 15:59:03

In reply to How long for Clozapine trial?, posted by pretty_paints on August 14, 2005, at 11:58:58

clozapine is a kind of odd drug--the side effects can be awful (dense sedation, drooling, weight gain, seizures), but, compared to most other neuroleptics (even the other atypical neuroleptics on the market), clozapine offers some definite advantages--low risk of EPS, even lower risk of TD, improved cognitive function, treatment of refractory psychotic disorders/mood-disorders w/ psychotic features, so on and so forth. With most antipsychotics, including most of the other atypicals on the market, you usually give it a 6 week trial; if you're hospitalized or otherwise pressed for time, 4 weeks might suffice. With clozapine...it takes a while to get up to the appropriate dosage; after that, it will take a while for you to adapt to it (or see if you will adpat to it)....so, I'd think 6 weeks would be sufficient to see if it offers control over delusions/hallucinations and/or paranoia, and you should probably see an improvement in any "negative symptoms," if that applies to your situation. Some people do adjust to clozapine and other side-effect heavy medications; but, it really is *your* decision as to whether or not you're willing to accept certain side-effects long or short term and whether on balance the risks: benefits ratio is favorable. IF you opt to stay on clozapine, you may see improvement for a while...when clozapine was still in very limited use (after being pulled from the market, but still released to select populations because of consumer demand), it was noted that clozapine-treated people saw ongoing improvements in negative symptoms, mood-symptoms, and had increasing levels of social interaction and integration over an extended period of time...basically, their quality of life continued to improve for a good while, and then levelled-off; when it did level off, the clozapine-patients had a *much* higher overall quality of life than those treated with conventional neuroleptics. But, again, its your life, and its your decision; I dont know what your diagnosis is, or what you've tried already, but there probably are a number of other options if clozapine doesn't work out for you. Good luck!


Share
Tweet  

Thread

 

Post a new follow-up

Your message only Include above post


Notify the administrators

They will then review this post with the posting guidelines in mind.

To contact them about something other than this post, please use this form instead.

 

Start a new thread

 
Google
dr-bob.org www
Search options and examples
[amazon] for
in

This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | FAQ
Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:med_empowered thread:541509
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050811/msgs/541592.html