This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Psychiatry  • Drug Therapy  • Adverse Effects  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Rosenheck and colleagues¹ reported that olanzapine did not demonstrate advantages compared with haloperidol (in combination with prophylactic benztropine) in compliance, symptoms, extrapyramidal symptoms, or overall quality of life among patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder The authors also found that olanzapine was associated with better cognitive function and motor function (including less tardive dyskinesia) than haloperidol, but also with greater weight gain.

From these data, it remains unclear whether the higher cost of olanzapine is justified. Tardive dyskinesia is a frequent adverse effect of neuroleptic medications; for instance, we reported an incidence of nearly 70% during 20 years of exposure.² Although the study by Rosenheck et al did not have adequate statistical power to detect a difference in the risk of tardive dyskinesia between the 2 medications, their results suggested a greater reduction of tardive dyskinesia with olanzapine during the 12-month double-blind phase of the study. . . . [Full Text of this Article]

William M. Glazer, MD
Department of Psychiatry
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Olanzapine vs Haloperidol for Treatment of Schizophrenia
Jan Volavka and Leslie Citrome
JAMA. 2004;291(9):1064.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Olanzapine vs Haloperidol for Treatment of Schizophrenia
Mo Amin and Vijay S. Shukla
JAMA. 2004;291(9):1065.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Olanzapine vs Haloperidol for Treatment of Schizophrenia
Michal Kunz
JAMA. 2004;291(9):1065.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Olanzapine vs Haloperidol for Treatment of Schizophrenia
Lieuwe de Haan and Nico van Beveren
JAMA. 2004;291(9):1065.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Olanzapine vs Haloperidol for Treatment of Schizophrenia—Reply
Robert Rosenheck, Deborah Perlick, Stephen Bingham, and Joseph Collins
JAMA. 2004;291(9):1065-1066.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Effectiveness and Cost of Olanzapine and Haloperidol in the Treatment of Schizophrenia: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Robert Rosenheck, Deborah Perlick, Stephen Bingham, Wen Liu-Mares, Joseph Collins, Stuart Warren, Douglas Leslie, Edward Allan, E. Cabrina Campbell, Stanley Caroff, June Corwin, Lori Davis, Richard Douyon, Lawrence Dunn, Denise Evans, Ede Frecska, John Grabowski, David Graeber, Lawrence Herz, Kong Kwon, William Lawson, Felicitas Mena, Javaid Sheikh, David Smelson, and Valerie Smith-Gamble
JAMA. 2003;290(20):2693-2702.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT