The Impact of Long-acting Paliperidone in Reducing Hospitalizations and Clinical Severity in Recent Onset Schizophrenia: A Mirror-image Study in Real-world Clinical Setting

OBJECTIVE: Schizophrenia is a debilitating disease that disrupts the lives of many affected individuals and exerts a toll on the health system. Only few studies assessed once-monthly injectable formulation of paliperidone palmitate (PP-1M) and other long-acting antipsychotics in recent onset schizophrenia (ROS). To evaluate whether PP-1M is efficacious in reducing frequency and length of hospitalizations and psychosis symptom severity in patients with ROS. METHODS: This mirror-image study included 112 patients, suffering from ROS admitted in a psychiatric ward and successively treated with PP-1M for 1-year. Other psychotic disorders were excluded. We collected socio-demographic data of all subjects included, number and days of hospitalization, as well as Clinical Global Impression-Severity scale (CGI-S) and Clinician-Rated Dimensions of Psychosis Symptom Severity (CRDPSS) scores at the initiation and after 1-year of PP treatment. RESULTS: After 1-year PP-1M treatment, mean scores of both CGI and CRDPSS significantly decreased (p < 0.001), as well as the mean number of hospitalizations (p = 0.002) and total hospitalization days (p < 0.001) in comparison with those of the previous year. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that PP-1M can be considered as an important therapeutic option in patients with ROS. Its use led to a meaningful reduction in the patient’s use of hospital services, as well as a significant clinical improvement of psychotic symptoms in our sample.