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The VMAT2 inhibitors: New hope for an old scourge
Author(s) -
Price Lawrence H.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the brown university psychopharmacology update
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7532
pISSN - 1068-5308
DOI - 10.1002/pu.30274
Subject(s) - tardive dyskinesia , medicine , adverse effect , intensive care medicine , psychiatry , pharmacology , schizophrenia (object oriented programming)
A scourge, to be sure, of our own making. I'm referring in the title of this commentary to tardive dyskinesia (TD), one of the most debilitating side effects of the first‐generation antipsychotics (FGAs). Although TD was first recognized as an adverse effect of these drugs in the 1950s, it was decades before our field fully embraced the implications. In no small part, this reflected our reluctance to find fault with a class of drugs that had revolutionized treatment for millions of people. The incidence of TD has declined significantly since the introduction of the second‐generation antipsychotics (SGAs) in the 1990s — not fortuitously, since reducing the risk of TD was a key driver in the development of the SGAs.