Yeh, L.-L.; Lee, W.-C.; Kuo, K.-H.; Pan, Y.-J. Antipsychotics and Mortality in Adult and Geriatric Patients with Schizophrenia. Pharmaceuticals2024, 17, 61.
Yeh, L.-L.; Lee, W.-C.; Kuo, K.-H.; Pan, Y.-J. Antipsychotics and Mortality in Adult and Geriatric Patients with Schizophrenia. Pharmaceuticals 2024, 17, 61.
Yeh, L.-L.; Lee, W.-C.; Kuo, K.-H.; Pan, Y.-J. Antipsychotics and Mortality in Adult and Geriatric Patients with Schizophrenia. Pharmaceuticals2024, 17, 61.
Yeh, L.-L.; Lee, W.-C.; Kuo, K.-H.; Pan, Y.-J. Antipsychotics and Mortality in Adult and Geriatric Patients with Schizophrenia. Pharmaceuticals 2024, 17, 61.
Abstract
Patients with schizophrenia had higher mortality risks and the role of antipsychotic medications remained inconclusive. In an aging society, elderly schizophrenia patients warrant increased attention. In this study, we aimed to explore medication dosage associations with mortality in schizophrenia patients, using Taiwan's national healthcare database from 2010 to 2014, with 102,964 patients with schizophrenia, and a subgroup of 6,433 elderly patients, compared to an age- and gender-matched control group. The findings revealed that schizophrenia patients with no antipsychotic exposure had the highest mortality risk as compared to the control sample—with a 3.61 and 3.37-fold risk for overall and cardiovascular mortality respectively in age and gender-adjusted model, followed by high, low, and moderate exposure groups. A similar pattern was observed in elderly schizophrenia patients but high exposure to antipsychotics was associated with the highest risk in both overall and cardiovascular mortality in elderly patients, with a 3.01, and 2.95-fold risk), respectively. In conclusion, the use of antipsychotics is beneficial to patients with schizophrenia, with recommended exposure levels being low to moderate. In elderly patients, high antipsychotic exposure was associated with the highest mortality risk. We should pay more attention to antipsychotic dosage in elderly schizophrenia patients.
Keywords
antipsychotic; mortality; schizophrenia; elderly; daily defined dosage
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Psychiatry and Mental Health
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
