A comparative study of zipraside and clozapine in the treatment of schizophrenia with excitement and agitation

Objective To compare the efficacy and safety of zipraside with clozapine in the treatment of schizophrenia with excitement and agitation .Methods Eighty patients with schizophrenia were randomly treated with zipraside(120-160mg/d )and clozapine(150—400 mg/d )for 2 weeks.The Brief Psychiatric Rating scale(BPRS) and Treatment Emergent Symptom Scale(TESS)were used to measure the efficacy and safety .Results Compared with the baseline,the patients experienced significant improvement in BPRS scores at the end of both 1st and 2nd week.The effective rates of zipraside and clozapine were 70.0% and 72.5% respectively at the end of 2nd week and there had no significantly difference (P0.05).The incidence of adverse events in zipraside group was significantly less than that in clozapine group patients.Conclusion Zipraside is as efficacious as clozapine in controlling excitement and agitation for patients with schizophrenia,with fewer adverse events.