AUTHOR=Nielsen Mette Ødegaard , Kristensen Tina Dam , Borup Bojesen Kirsten , Glenthøj Birte Y. , Lemvigh Cecilie K. , Ebdrup Bjørn H. 

TITLE=Differential Effects of Aripiprazole and Amisulpride on Negative and Cognitive Symptoms in Patients With First-Episode Psychoses

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry

VOLUME=13

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.834333

DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2022.834333

ISSN=1664-0640

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Introduction</title><p>Aripiprazole is hypothesized to have an effect on negative and cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia. Likewise, amisulpride is one of the only second-generation antipsychotics with which an effect on negative symptoms is reported. In the present study, we compare the effect of aripiprazole and amisulpride in initially antipsychotic-naïve patients with first-episode psychoses.</p></sec><sec><title>Methods</title><p>Psychopathology and cognitive measures from two consecutive cohorts of antipsychotic-naïve first episode psychotic patients were obtained before and after 6 weeks of antipsychotic monotherapy with either aripiprazole or amisulpride. Matched healthy controls were included to account for retest effects on the cognitive measures. Analyses of variance (repeated-measures ANOVA) were performed to detect effect of time and possible cohort<sup>*</sup>time interactions.</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p>Longitudinal data was obtained from 47 and 48 patients treated for 6 weeks with amisulpride or aripiprazole, respectively. For the Wallwork negative symptom dimension, there was a cohort<sup>*</sup>time interaction [<italic>F</italic><sub>(1, 93)</sub> = 4.29, <italic>p</italic> = 0.041] and a significant effect of time [<italic>F</italic><sub>(1, 93)</sub> = 6.03, <italic>p</italic> = 0.016], which was driven by an improvement in patients treated with aripiprazole [<italic>t</italic><sub>(47)</sub> = 4.1, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001] and not observed in patients treated with amisulpride (<italic>p</italic> &gt; 0.5). For the eight cognitive measures, no cohort<sup>*</sup>time interaction was found and neither was cognitive improvement in any of the cohorts when accounting for retest effect.</p></sec><sec><title>Conclusion</title><p>Patients treated with aripiprazole improved on negative symptoms, which was not the case for patients treated with amisulpride. This may point to a general effect of a partial D2 receptor agonist on negative symptoms in patients with first-episode psychoses. There was, however, no improvement in cognitive functions.</p></sec>