A comparative study of metabolic side effects of risperidone and olanzapine in the treatment of schizophrenia

ABSTRACTBackground: Schizophrenia is one of most serious chronic psychiatric disorder, which affects about 1% of population. Treatment of schizophrenia comprises of typical antipsychotics and or atypical antipsychotics. Typical antipsychotics like haloperidol have extrapyramidal side effects which limit their use in chronic cases. Atypical antipsychotics though have better treatment response, they have metabolic side effects like hypercholesteremia, hypertriglyceridemia and hyperglycaemia. As there is paucity of data in Indian population the present study has been taken up to compare the metabolic side effects of risperidone and olanzapine in the treatment of schizophrenic patients in a tertiary care hospital.Methods: It was a comparative study conducted on 60 patients of Schizophrenia for one year in a tertiary care hospital. The study subjects were randomly assigned into 2 groups of 30 patients each, where group 1 were treated with atypical antipsychotic drug risperidone and group 2 with Olanzapine and both groups received the treatment for one year. Metabolic side effects like hypercholesteremia, hypertriglyceridemia and hyperglycaemia were evaluated and compared over a period of one year.Results: Both risperidone and olanzapine were associated with comparable baseline to endpoint increase in metabolic side effects. However, risperidone treated subjects had significantly less metabolic side effects compared to olanzapine.Conclusions: Apart from total cholesterol and triglycerides, other metabolic side effects were less in risperidone treated patients than olanzapine treated patients.