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Differential benefits of olanzapine on executive function in schizophrenia patients: Preliminary findings
Author(s) -
Mehta Neeti D.,
Won Michelle J.,
Babin Shelly L.,
Patel Saumil S.,
Wassef Adel A.,
Chuang Alice Z.,
Sereno Anne B.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
human psychopharmacology: clinical and experimental
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.461
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1099-1077
pISSN - 0885-6222
DOI - 10.1002/hup.2718
Subject(s) - olanzapine , stroop effect , antisaccade task , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , psychology , positive and negative syndrome scale , audiology , psychosis , medicine , psychiatry , cognition , eye movement , neuroscience , saccade
Objective Schizophrenia patients show executive function (EF) impairments in voluntary orienting as measured by eye‐movements. We tested 14 inpatients to investigate the effects of the antipsychotic olanzapine on EF, as measured by antisaccade eye‐movement performance. Methods Patients were tested at baseline (before olanzapine), 3–5 days post‐medication, and 12–14 days post‐medication. Patients were also assessed on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) to measure the severity of schizophrenia‐related symptoms, and administered the Stroop task, a test of EF. Nine matched controls were also tested on the antisaccade and Stroop. Results Both groups showed improvement on Stroop and antisaccade; however, the schizophrenia group improved significantly more on antisaccade, indicating an additional benefit of olanzapine on EF performance. Patients with poorer baseline antisaccade performance (High‐Deficit) showed significantly greater improvement on the antisaccade task than patients with better baseline performance (Low‐Deficit), suggesting that baseline EF impairment predicts the magnitude of cognitive improvement with olanzapine. These subgroups showed significant and equivalent improvement on PANSS scores, indicating that improvement on the antisaccade task with olanzapine was not a result of differences in magnitude of clinical improvement. Conclusions This preliminary study provides evidence that olanzapine may be most advantageous for patients with greater baseline EF deficits.