Studies on anticonvulsants as adjunct therapy for TRS yielded con

Studies on anticonvulsants as adjunct therapy for TRS yielded contradicting findings on valproic acid139,140 and modest effects in controlled studies with small samples on adjunct carbamazepine.16,141,142 Data on novel anticonvulsants (topiramate and lamotrigine) is limited to case studies.143 While anticonvulsants are widely used, there are few controlled trials on their efficacy. Furthermore, anticonvulsants and lithium are prescribed for violent behavior, although evidence is scarce. Unlike the purposeless violence in temporal lobe epilepsy, there

is no reason Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical to believe that violence in schizophrenia has a specific illness-related biological mechanism. If carbamazepine can be effective in treating the violent outburst of TRS, this is probably the result of a nonspecific nonillness-related effect. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Hence, it is essential to demonstrate first that the drug is effective in treating violence across diseases as well as primary violence before

using it in TRS. Electroconvulsive therapy ECT given concomitantly with antipsychotic drugs was shown to have some effect on TRS in a few short-term Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical trials and case reports.144-151 However, it is important to note that patients who get EXT are the more severe patients, and they generally get ECT after most other interventions have failed. Hence, when and if improvement is eventually associated with ECT, the possibility of a regression to the mean of the most severe patients cannot be ruled out. Moreover, the lack of controlled trials remains Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the main disadvantage of research in ECT, and despite nearly six decades of wide clinical use, a strong substantial support is still absent. Furthermore, issues such as the persistence of effect and the long-term maintenance of TRS patients treated with ECT have not been adequately addressed. Conclusions TRS remains a major personal tragedy and a public health problem. However, because so little is known Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical about TRS and because the results of treatment are so variable, it

is essential to weight carefully the risk-benefit ratio. Although atypical novel antipsychotics are better tolerated than older drugs and may be more Rutecarpine effective in some but not most TRS patients, no proven treatment exists for TRS. It is essential that, instead of increasing the dose and relentlessly adding and changing medications, or embarking upon unproven interventions, psychiatrists acknowledge to themselves and explain to frustrated patients and C646 nmr family members, the limits of pharmacological treatment. Otherwise, we run the risk of making a bad situation worse by adding the suffering of adverse effects to that of the illness. Hopefully, persistent investigation should lead us to where other medical disciplines are, by which putative drugs developed based on pathophysiological understanding will treat specific manifestations of this syndromal disease.

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