Abstract: INTRODUCTION:
Acute akathisia is a neuropsychiatric syndrome with a negative effect on illness outcome. Its incidence in patients treated with antipsychotics has shown to be highly variable across studies.
OBJECTIVES:
Our goals were to investigate prevalence, risk factors for the development of acute akathisia, and differences in incidence between antipsychotics in a sample of 493 first episode non-affective psychosis patients.
METHODS:
This is a pooled analysis of three prospective, randomized, flexible-dose, and open-label clinical trials. Patients were randomized assigned to different arms of treatment (haloperidol, quetiapine, olanzapine, ziprasidone, risperidone, or aripiprazole). Akathisia was determined using the Barnes Akathisia Scale at 6 weeks after antipsychotic initialization. Univariate analyses were performed to identify demographic, biochemical, substance use, clinical, and treatment-related predictors of acute akathisia. Considering these results, a predictive model based of a subsample of 132 patients was constructed with akathisia as the dependent variable.
RESULTS:
The overall incidence of akathisia was 19.5%. No differences in demographic, biochemical, substance use, and clinical variables were found. Significant incidence differences between antipsychotics were observed (? 2 = 68.21, p = 0.000): haloperidol (57%), risperidone (20%), aripiprazole (18.2%), ziprasidone (17.2%), olanzapine (3.6%), and quetiapine (3.5%). The predictive model showed that the type of antipsychotic (OR = 21.3, p = 0.000), need for hospitalization (OR = 2.6, p = 0.05), and BPRS total score at baseline (OR = 1.05, p = 0.03) may help to predict akathisia emergence.
CONCLUSIONS:
Among second generation antipsychotics, only olanzapine and quetiapine should be considered as akathisia-sparing drugs. The type of antipsychotic, having been hospitalized, and a more severe symptomatology at intake seem to predict the development of acute akathisia.
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