In addition, Subotnik said, the benefits appear to be greater than when given after individuals have had the disorder for many years, which indicates that the long-acting injectable should be offered to patients earlier in the course of schizophrenia.

Subotnik said another benefit of the injectable is that - because it’s administered at a doctor’s office rather than taken at home - doctors can more easily track whether patients are regularly taking the medication.

“Because of that, we had nearly perfect adherence to the long-acting form of risperidone,” he said.

Analyzing the same group of people, the researchers also found that consistent adherence to antipsychotic medication led to improvements in the patients’ cognitive functioning, Nuechterlein said. (Those results have been presented at a conference but not yet published.) And in a 2012 study led by the late George Bartzokis, a UCLA professor of psychiatry, MRI scans of some of these participants found that the long-acting medication also increased the amount of brain myelin, the coating on nerve fibers which, like insulation around a wire, improves communication between nerve cells. Myelination often decreases in people with schizophrenia, which leads to impairments in brain function and cognition.

Nuechterlein said the next stage of the research will be examining whether there are additional benefits of a long-acting injectable antipsychotic medication, and if it is just as effective if given only once a month instead of every two weeks.

The study’s other authors were Laurie Casaus, Joseph Ventura, John Luo, Gerhard Hellemann, Denise Gretchen-Doorly and Stephen Marder, all of UCLA. The research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH037705 and MH066286); supplementary funding and medication was provided by Janssen Scientific Affairs.

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Mark Wheeler
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University of California - Los Angeles