Addressing the unmet needs of patients with persistent negative symptoms of schizophrenia: emerging pharmacological treatment options.

ABSTRACT: The negative symptoms of schizophrenia represent an impairment of normal emotional responses, thought processes and behaviors, and include blunting or flattening of affect, alogia/aprosody, avolition/apathy, anhedonia, and asociality. Negative symptoms contribute to a reduced quality of life, increased functional disability, increased burden of illness, and poorer long-term outcomes, to a greater degree than positive symptoms. Primary negative symptoms are prominent and persistent in up to 26% of patients with schizophrenia, and they are estimated to occur in up to 58% of outpatients at any given time. Negative symptoms respond less well to medications than positive symptoms, and to date treatment options for negative symptoms have been limited, with no accepted standard treatment. Modest

SUBMITTER: Chue P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4020880 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature