The Comparison of Therapeutic Effects of FK-880 (Sulpiride) and Perphenazine in Schizophrenia by A Double-blind Controlled Study

Abstract

The authors carried out a pilot study on therapeutic effectiveness of sulpiride mainly in the treatment of schizophrenia. The results of this study were already published (Journal of New Remedies & Clinics 22 ; 29, 1973). This paper presents the effect of sulpiride on schizophrenia by a double-blind controlled study compared with perphenazine, an established standard neuroleptic. The subjects enrolled were 64 hospitalized chronic schizophrenics, who were divided into two groups and daily given4-10 tablets of either sulpiride (100mg/Tab.) or perphenazine (3mg/Tab.) for a period of 6 weeks. During this period, 9 patients, 5 receiving sulpiride and 4 receiving perphenazine, dropped out. The global comparative judgement after the treatment for 6 weeks revealed statistically no significant difference in the therapeutic effects between both drug groups by a sequential analysis. The general improvement rating after the treatment for 6 weeks revealed that the slight or more improvement was observed in 44.4% of patients given sulpiride and 55.2% of patients given perphenazine, while the moderate or more improvement was observed in 29.6% and 13.8%, respectively. In patients suffering from schizophrenia for over 5 years, sulpiride showed significantly more favourable effect than perphenazine (P<0.05). This result suggests that sulpiride could be also favourably effective in the treatment of chronic schizophrenia. In the items of the three universities' rating scale, perphenazine made significantly higher improvement in hallucination than sulpiride (P<0.05) 4 and 6 weeks after initiation of the treatment. In the incidence of side effects, no significant difference was observed between the two groups. In the laboratory tests performed in all the patients no contributory abnormal findings were obtained.