Paliperidone palmitate in short- and long-term treatment of schizophrenia.

Poor adherence to treatment remains a major problem in the management of patients with schizophrenia. In the 60s, first generation antipsychotics in depot formulation have been introduced on the market with the aim to improve adherence to therapy. However, the limited effectiveness on negative symptoms and the tendency to induce extrapyramidal side effects has limited their use.

Paliperidone extended-release in the short- and long-term treatment of schizophrenia.

Paliperidone is a second-generation antipsychotic drug belonging to the class of benzisoxasole derivatives. Paliperidone is the major active metabolite of risperidone (9-OH-risperidone) and, as such, is comparable to the latter in terms of pharmacodynamic properties. However, due to its peculiar characteristics, paliperidone may be particularly useful in the treatment of schizophrenic patients.

Neuroanatomy of vulnerability to psychosis: a voxel-based meta-analysis.

Background: Individual structural imaging studies in the pre-psychotic phases deliver contrasting findings and are unable to definitively characterize the neuroanatomical correlates of an increased liability to psychosis and to predict transition to psychosis.

Method: Ninenteen voxel-based morphometry (VBM) studies of subjects at enhanced risk for psychosis and healthy controls were included in an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis.

Results: The overall sample consisted of 701 controls and 896 high risk subjects.

Reduced fractional anisotropy of corpus callosum in first-contact, antipsychotic drug-naive patients with schizophrenia.

Background: Corpus callosum is the most important commissure of the brain and therefore represents a first-choice candidate to challenge hypotheses of disrupted inter-hemispheric connectivity and white matter pathology in patients with schizophrenia. Recent studies on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of corpus callosum yielded promising but equivocal evidence of reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) in schizophrenia patients who were, for the most part, chronic cases on medication for a lengthy period of time. To exclude potentially confounding effects of the course of the disorder and its treatment, we compared callosal FA of first-contact, antipsychotic drug-naive schizophrenia patients (n=21) and healthy controls (n=21).