Schizophrenia, maintenance treatment becomes easier
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Schizophrenia is a chronic, disabling and progressive mental illness, characterized by delusions, hallucinations and cognitive disorders, which can manifest at variable intervals between periods of relative symptomatic stability. Globally, schizophrenia affects approximately 24 million people and is often associated with significant distress and impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, and other important aspects of life. So much so that it is one of the 15 major causes of disability worldwide.
Like all chronic diseases, it must be treated for life, but due to the nature of the pathology, patients often have difficulty following the therapy. A tool that could help patients and their caregivers better manage their care has now been approved by the European Commission: the Long Acting Injectable (LAI) formulation of aripiprazole 960 mg which can be administered once every two months for the maintenance treatment of schizophrenia in adult patients stabilized on aripiprazole. Administration is scheduled once every two months with intramuscular injection in the buttock and is the first LAI antipsychotic with bimonthly administration authorized in the European Union for this indication.
The EC approval is based on a 32-week pharmacokinetic bridging study which demonstrated that aripiprazole LAI with bimonthly administration offers similar plasma concentrations, and therefore similar efficacy, as well as a similar safety and tolerability profile as aripiprazole LAI with monthly administration in 266 adults, 185 of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia.
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