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Context: Cognitive impairment in schizophrenia is fre- Results: No differential drug effects were observed.
quent, involves multiple domains, and is enduring. Nu- Of 16 cognitive measures, 9 demonstrated improve-
merous recent clinical trials have suggested that second- ment over time and only 2 demonstrated greater rates
generation antipsychotic medications significantly of change than those observed in the healthy control
enhance cognition in schizophrenia. However, none of group undergoing repeated assessment. The composite
these studies included healthy controls undergoing re- effect size for cognitive change was 0.33 in the healthy
peated testing to assess the possibility that improve- control group (attributed to practice) and 0.36 in the
ments might reflect simple practice effects. patients with first-episode schizophrenia. Improve-
ments in cognition in the first-episode schizophrenia
Objective: To report the results on cognition of a ran-
group could not be accounted for by medication dose,
domized comparison of 2 widely prescribed second- demographic variables, or intellectual level.
generation antipsychotic medications, olanzapine and ris-
peridone, in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and
Conclusions: The cognitive improvements observed
a healthy control group.
in the trial were consistent in magnitude with practice
Design: Randomized clinical trial.
effects observed in healthy controls, suggesting that
some of the improvements in cognition in the first-
Setting: Hospital-based research units. episode schizophrenia group may have been due to
practice effects (ie, exposure, familiarity, and/or
Patients: A total of 104 participants with first-episode procedural learning). Our results also indicated that
schizophrenia and 84 healthy controls. differential medication effects on cognition were
small. We believe that these findings have important
Main Outcome Measures: Cognitive assessment of implications for drug discovery and the design of reg-
all study participants occurred at baseline, 6 weeks later, istration trials that attempt to demonstrate cognitive
and 16 weeks later. Neurocognitive tests included mea- enhancement.
sures of working memory and attention, speed, motor
function, episodic memory, and executive function. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2007;64(10):1115-1122
C
OGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT IN ers associated with chronicity (patient role,
schizophrenia is fre- institutionalization, interactions with ag-
quent, involves multiple ing, or disease processes) are minimized.
domains of information Naturalistic studies of patients with FES
processing, and may be a demonstrate that they have substantial
core feature of the disorder.1-4 Thus, neu- neurocognitive impairments of −1.0 to −2.0
rocognition has come to be viewed as a key SDs below average across a wide range of
target in clinical trials.5 Patients with first- domains, including working memory, at-
episode schizophrenia (FES) may be an es- tention, processing speed, and episodic
pecially important group for such studies memory.6-8 Longitudinal improvements are
Author Affiliations: Division of because they have demonstrable plasticity often considered modest after treatment
Psychiatry Research, Zucker in symptomatic response to antipsychot- in patients taking antipsychotic agents who
Hillside Hospital/Albert
Einstein College of Medicine,
ics, can be tested while drug naive, and do are followed up for several years.9-12 Sev-
Glen Oaks, New York. not have long histories of multiple antipsy- eral recent meta-analyses13,14 have sug-
Dr Goldman currently works chotic drug treatment that may confound gested that second-generation antipsy-
for Pfizer, New York, New York. results. Furthermore, potential confound- chotics (SGAs) improve cognition. Large
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Abbreviations: CPT-IP, Continuous Performance Test identical pairs subtest; CVLT, California Verbal Learning Test; DMS, Delayed Match to Sample Test;
MMSE, Mini-Mental State Examination; WAIS-R, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test–Revised; WCST, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test; WMS-R, Wechsler Memory
Scale–Revised.
Treatment
Weekⴛ Medication
Treatment Week Medication Group Group
Abbreviations: CPT-IP, Continuous Performance Test identical pairs subtest; CVLT, California Verbal Learning Test; MMSE, Mini-Mental State Examination;
WCST, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test; WMS-R, Wechsler Memory Scale–Revised.
a Information in parentheses is time/group/group ⫻ time, denominator df.
tions that favored steeper improvement in the FES group would modal antipsychotic dose served as the independent measure and
be viewed as evidence of a drug effect, reflecting cognitive en- cognitive change scores served as dependent measures. For mul-
hancement. A main effect for time in the absence of such an tiple regressions, we relaxed significance of the equation to P⬍.05
interaction could be viewed as representing practice effects. and set significance for entry of predictors at P⬍.10.
In a set of secondary analyses, we attempted to determine if
cognitive change could be attributed to causes other than drugs RESULTS
or practice using multiple regression that involved a variant of
stepwise selection (MAXR in the Proc Reg module of SAS28). Thus, In a preliminary analysis, we sought to determine if base-
we sought to determine if baseline state variables or baseline to
line differences between the medication groups were pres-
week 16 change measures (positive, negative, or disorganized
symptoms) predicted cognitive change (ie, if changes could be ent. Study participants assigned to olanzapine and ris-
due to pseudospecificity and simply reflect antipsychotic effects peridone did not differ on any cognitive measure at study
on symptoms). To ascertain if systematic dose effects on cogni- entry (Table 3), as indicated by both nonsignificant medi-
tive change scores were present, we also constructed a series of cation group effects and post hoc t test between-group
linear regressions within each of the medication groups in which effects at baseline.
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Abbreviations: CVLT, California Verbal Learning Test; MMSE, Mini-Mental State Examination; WCST, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.
a Information in parentheses is time/group/group ⫻time, denominator df.
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Variable Weeks 0-6 Weeks 6-16 Weeks 0-16 Weeks 0-6 Weeks 6-16 Weeks 0-16
Semantic fluency −0.21 0.06 −0.13 0.04 0.01 0.06
Trail making 0.43 0.41 0.70 0.24 0.30 0.56
WCST % perseveration 0.37 0.06 0.36 0.42 −0.01 0.42
WCST set −0.23 0.15 −0.06 −0.13 0.04 −0.05
CVLT trials 1-5 0.40 0.48 0.53 0.64 0.18 0.71
CVLT recognition 0.37 0.05 0.42 0.42 0.11 0.44
Line orientation 0.39 −0.01 0.34 0.17 0.05 0.22
MMSE 0.70 0.16 0.79 0.01 0.39 0.44
Logical memory 0.74 0.32 0.84 0.79 0.29 1.00
Visual reproduction 0.64 0.07 0.66 0.12 −0.11 −0.01
DMS NA 0.08 NA NA 0.00 NA
Digit span 0.24 0.17 0.35 0.42 0.07 0.45
Digit symbol 0.43 0.07 0.43 0.17 −0.10 0.62
CPT-IP NA 0.15 NA NA 0.04 NA
Tapping 0.12 0.13 0.26 0.13 0.20 0.29
Pegboard 0.20 0.01 0.14 0.51 0.16 0.67
SANS 0.38 -0.30 0.10 NA NA NA
Hallucinations 1.30 0.11 1.40 NA NA NA
Delusions 0.96 0.58 1.47 NA NA NA
Severity of illness 1.21 0.53 1.42 NA NA NA
Disorganization 0.67 0.26 0.84 NA NA NA
Abbreviations: CPT-IP, Continuous Performance Test identical pairs subtest; CVLT, California Verbal Learning Test; DMS, Delayed Match to Sample Test;
MMSE, Mini-Mental State Examination; NA, not applicable; SANS, Schedule for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms; WCST, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.
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