A clinical controlled study on schizophrenia treated with paliperidone-ER and risperidone

Objective:To compare the efficacy and side effects of paliperidone-ER and risperidone in treating schizophrenia. Method:64 patients of schizophrenia were treated with paliperidone-ER(n=32) or risperidone(n=32)randomly,for 8 weeks.The efficacy was assessed with the positive and negative symptoms scale (PANSS),and the safety was assessed with treatment emergent symptoms scale (TESS) before treatment and at the ends of week 1,2,4 and 8 treatment,respectively. Results:The significantly effective rate and effective rate of paliperidone-ER were 59.4% and 81.2%,and of risperidone were 57.1% and 75.0% respectively,and there were no significant differences between two groups(P0.05),Paliperidone-ER group showed lower negative symptom score at week 4 (15.8±3.1 vs 20.2±3.2,P0.05) and at week 8 (11.9±2.1 vs 17.6±5.4,P0.01) than risperidone group,although the scores decreased after 4 and 8 weeks. Conclusion:Paliperidone-ER is an effective and safe antipsychotic drug with more showing significant improvement compared with risperidone in negative symptoms.