Remission from antipsychotic treatment in first episode psychosis related to longitudinal changes in brain glutamate

Neuroimaging studies in schizophrenia have linked elevated glutamate metabolite levels to non-remission following antipsychotic treatment, and also indicate that antipsychotics can reduce glutamate metabolite levels. However, the relationship between symptomatic reduction and change in glutamate dur...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:NPJ schizophrenia 2019-08, Vol.5 (1), p.12-9, Article 12
Main Authors: Merritt, Kate, Perez-Iglesias, Rocio, Sendt, Kyra-Verena, Goozee, Rhianna, Jauhar, Sameer, Pepper, Fiona, Barker, Gareth J, Glenthøj, Birte, Arango, Celso, Lewis, Shôn, Kahn, René, Stone, James, Howes, Oliver, Dazzan, Paola, McGuire, Philip, Egerton, Alice
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/378/1689/1761
631/378/1689/1799
692/53
692/699/476/1761
692/699/476/1799
Antipsychotics
Cognitive Psychology
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Neurology
Neurosciences
Psychiatry
Psychosis
Psychotropic drugs
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Neuroimaging studies in schizophrenia have linked elevated glutamate metabolite levels to non-remission following antipsychotic treatment, and also indicate that antipsychotics can reduce glutamate metabolite levels. However, the relationship between symptomatic reduction and change in glutamate during initial antipsychotic treatment is unclear. Here we report proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) measurements of Glx and glutamate in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and thalamus in patients with first episode psychosis ( n  = 23) at clinical presentation, and after 6 weeks and 9 months of treatment with antipsychotic medication. At 9 months, patients were classified into Remission ( n  = 12) and Non-Remission ( n  = 11) subgroups. Healthy volunteers ( n  = 15) were scanned at the same three time-points. In the thalamus, Glx varied over time according to remission status ( P  = 0.020). This reflected an increase in Glx between 6 weeks and 9 months in the Non-Remission subgroup that was not evident in the Remission subgroup ( P  = 0.031). In addition, the change in Glx in the thalamus over the 9 months of treatment was positively correlated with the change in the severity of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) positive, total and general symptoms (P
ISSN:2334-265X
2334-265X
DOI:10.1038/s41537-019-0080-1