Supplementing antipsychotic treatment with the corticosteroid dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) may provide additional relief from negative, depressive, and anxiety symptoms in patients with schizophrenia, investigators suggest.
As DHEA has previously been found to improve mood, sense of well-being, interest, activity and energy, Rael Strous (from Beer Yaakov Mental Health Center, Israel – my host Institution- I.R.) and colleagues investigated the drugs potential in treating negative schizophrenic symptoms.
They randomly assigned 30 patients with schizophrenia and prominent negative symptoms to receive DHEA or placebo in addition to their regular antipsychotic medication for 6 weeks. DHEA was titrated up to a maximum dose of 100 mg. Patients receiving DHEA showed a mean decrease in negative symptom scores on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale of 0.83, from 3.13 to 2.30, compared with a reduction of just 0.37, from 2.92 to 2.55 for those taking placebo.
A significant difference between the two groups was evident from week 2. There was no significant difference between the two groups with regard to positive and total scores, “which is not unexpected,” say the researchers, “since both groups continued to take their standard antipsychotic medication, with established beneficial effects on positive symptoms and general symptomatology.”
Patients taking DHEA also showed improvements in symptoms of depression and anxiety. However, unlike negative symptoms, these improvements were not correlated with increases in plasma levels of DHEA.
“The findings from this study raise important issues regarding the role of neurosteroids in general, and DHEA in particular, in the ongoing symptomatology and pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia,” the team concludes in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
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