Current Neuropharmacology - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2005

Pharmacologic approaches that diminish dopamine-mediated neural transmission in brain have antipsychotic actions in humans. Blockade of D2 family dopamine receptors is the most common strategy. A paradoxical strategy of using dopamine agonists in particular circumstances to similarly diminish dopaminergic transmission is based on the known function of dopamine autoreceptors and on consideration of the intrinsic acti Read More

Schizophrenia is the most disabling psychiatric disorder and one of the world's top ten causes of long-term disability, affecting 1% of the population worldwide. The major symptoms of schizophrenia, psychosis (positive symptoms), apathy, social withdrawal (negative symptoms) and cognitive impairment, become manifest in late adolescence/early adulthood and persist thereafter, resulting in chronic disability. The pharmacoth Read More

Current antipsychotic medications are efficacious for the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. However, there remains a significant unmet need for alternate strategies that could result in improved tolerability and/or efficacy for negative and cognitive symptoms. A growing body of research suggests that NMDA mediated neuronal activity is involved in the etiology of schizophrenia. Glycine binds to a modulatory glycineB stryc Read More

Cognitive deficits, including impairments in working memory that have been linked to the prefrontal cortex, are among the most debilitating and difficult to treat features of schizophrenia. Consequently, the identification of potential targets informed by the pathophysiology of the illness is needed to develop novel pharmacological approaches for ameliorating these deficits. Postmortem studies of the prefrontal cortex in sch Read More

Schizophrenia is a well recognized and debilitating psychiatric disorder composed of several symptoms. Despite the clinical efficacy of present typical and atypical antipsychotics to alleviate positive symptoms, negative symptoms and cognitive disorders are not optimally controlled. Thus, there is an unmet medical need to develop novel medications with improved tolerability and efficacy for the treatment of these sympto Read More

Significant gender differences have been described for psychiatric disease prevalence and receipt of psychotropic medication. Second generation antipsychotic (SGAs) drugs are not a homogenous group as they differ in their receptor profiles, clinical efficacy and side effects. Gender differences in pharmacokinetics and side effects of second generation antipsychotic drugs have been investigated in several studies indi Read More