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Study finds that costly new antipsychotics offer few benefits over traditional drugs

BMJ 2005; 331 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.331.7519.717 (Published 29 September 2005) Cite this as: BMJ 2005;331:717
  1. Fred Charatan
  1. Florida

    The results of a major 18 month study indicate that four new drugs used to treat schizophrenia offer few, if any, benefits over much less expensive older medicines.

    The study has been described as “the largest, longest, and most comprehensive independent trial ever done to examine existing therapies for this disease” by Thomas Insel, director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the research.

    In the study 1493 patients from a wide variety of treatment settings at 57 sites in the United States were randomly assigned to one of five drugs, four of which were relatively …

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