ABSTRACT
Background: Schizophrenia is a commonest and one of the well known psychiatric disorders. Life expectancy of a patient with schizophrenia may be 20 to 30 years shorter than the general population. Long term antipsychotic therapy is usually required for the management of schizophrenia. It is not currently possible to predict which antipsychotic may be optimal for a given patient because there are still many debates about effectiveness and efficacy of atypical drugs over first generation antipsychotics. So, our aim is to assess the effectiveness of various antipsychotics by using various psychometric scales, which will be helpful to bring out better treatment options for schizophrenia patients.Methods: This was an observational questionnaire based study, conducted on patients of inpatient and outpatient Department of Psychiatry and Department of Pharmacology at VIMSAR, Burla, for a period of 24 months (September 2015 to August 2017). Patients of schizophrenia aged 18 years or above were subjected to clinical global impression – severity scale (CGI-S) and clinical global impression – improvement scale (CGI-I) questionnaire after taking informed consent. Then scores were calculated using non parametric test with Graph pad Prism version 6.0.Results: Out of the 90 cases, majority (60) of patients belonged to the middle (25 to 45 yrs) age group followed by 20 younger (<25 yrs) age group and rest 10 were elderly (>45 yrs) patients. Both scales showed significant improvement with atypical antipsychotics as compared to first generation antipsychotics.Conclusions: Based on these findings, we can conclude that atypical antipsychotics are more effective than first generation antipsychotics. But further studies are needed to assist clinicians in making optimum treatment decisions.
ABSTRACT
Effect of various concentrations of nickel (100, 200, 500 and1000 μM) and recovery treatments of boron (50 and100 μM) and copper (15 and 75 μM) each with 200 μM and 500 μM of nickel on germination, growth, biomass, chlorophyll, carotenoids, pheophytin, amylase, protein, sugar as well as activity of catalase and peroxidase were studied in radish (Raphanus sativus cv. Early menu) seedlings. Nickel treatments caused a considerable reduction in germination percentage, growth and biomass. The different pigments were also decreased with nickel treatments. However, boron addition with nickel recovered the negative effect on pigment contents. Among biochemical estimations, amylase activity and total proteins were found to be reduced in nickel treatments. Peroxidase and catalase activity were induced other than higher total sugar with nickel treatments. The combination of nickel with boron resulted into increased protein contents. This combination also reduced the catalase and peroxidase activity. The influence of nickel with copper failed to produce significant recovery except 200 μM nickel in combination with 15 μM copper with regard to catalase and peroxidase activity. The effect of nickel on hydrolyzing enzyme amylase was observed to be inhibitory, resulting into poor germination followed by poor seedlings growth. The stress protecting enzymes peroxidase and catalase seem to be induced under the influence of nickel, and providing protection to the seedlings.The application of boron with nickel showed improved germination and growth.The level of catalase and peroxidase were found to be significantly reduced showing normal growth and biomass of seedings.