Eszopiclone for persistent negative symptoms in schizophrenia – An unintended N-of-1 study

Abstract

Persistent negative and cognitive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia pose a significant challenge to clinicians. Being a heterogeneous cluster of symptoms with potentially distinct underlying pathogenesis, it is important to examine novel therapies based on emerging neurobiological evidence. Eszopiclone is known to enhance the deficient sleep spindles that are related to impairments in learning and memory in schizophrenia. In this report we highlight the potential utility of eszopiclone in treating persistent negative symptoms in a patient with chronic schizophrenia. The unintended N-of-1 design that spanned out over a period of 24weeks demonstrated improvements in negative symptoms while the patient was on eszopiclone and worsening of these symptoms while unintentionally being off eszopiclone treatment. These observations suggest a reasonable degree of specificity of our patient's response to eszopiclone, thus warranting future sleep-EEG guided systematic studies.