Severity in sustained attention impairment and clozapine-resistant schizophrenia: a retrospective study

BACKGROUND: Among patients with treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS), some exhibited further clozapine resistance (CR). This study aimed to investigate whether greater severity of treatment resistance in schizophrenia is associated with greater impairments in sustained attention. METHODS: Patients with a DSM-IV-defined schizophrenia were recruited from a psychiatric center in northern Taiwan (April 2010 to October 2010). Both TRS and CR were determined retrospectively from participants’ medical records following the consensus guidelines. The patients were divided into three groups: 102 non-TRS, 48 TRS without CR, and 54 TRS with CR. They underwent both undegraded and degraded Continuous Performance Tests (CPT), and their performance scores (d′) were standardized against a community sample to derive age-, sex-, and education-adjusted z scores. RESULTS: The TRS with CR group had significantly lower adjusted z scores of d′ on both undegraded and degraded CPTs than the other two groups. Meanwhile, the differences between the TRS without CR group and the non-TRS group were not significant. Multivariable linear regression analyses with adjustment for covariates revealed a trend of gradient impairments on the degraded CPT from non-TRS to TRS without CR and to TRS with CR. The proportions of attentional deficits (an adjusted z score of ≤ − 2.5) on the degraded CPT also exhibited a significant trend, from 36.3% in the non-TRS group to 62.5% in the TRS without CR group and to 83.3% in the TRS with CR group. CONCLUSIONS: Greater severity of treatment resistance in schizophrenia was associated with greater impairments in sustained attention, indicating some common vulnerability. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12888-019-2204-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.