Memantine add-on for Cognitive and Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Status:
Unknown status
Trial end date:
2017-12-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
The specific aim of this project is to test if memantine add-on therapy will be helpful for
patients with first episode schizophrenia who present with or without cognitive impairments
and negative symptoms, to examine the efficacy and safety of memantine as an adjuvant agent
to their ongoing maintenance therapy with atypical antipsychotics. Our objectives include:
1. Test memantine add-on by 2 different dosages comparing to a placebo-controlled group of
clinically stable first episode schizophrenic patients who are under second-generation
antipsychotic maintenance therapy. The results will give us information regarding
effective dosage and the profile of adverse drug reactions while using on this
population.
2. Examine whether the effect of memantine add-on will be affected by any significant
baseline clinical variables or predisposed cognitive deficits. That is to say, if
memantine will only demonstrate adjunctive effect on those who are cognitively impaired
or its effect is independent from baseline cognitive functioning or the severity of
baseline psychopathology.
3. Examine the changes in negative symptoms as the secondary outcomes to see if such a
cognitive enhancing effect to be concurrent with an improvement in negative symptoms or
independent from changes in negative symptoms.
4. Treat the changes in positive symptoms and other clinical outcomes, such as readmission,
being employed/going back to school, and psycho-social functioning scores as the
tertiary outcomes to examine the effectiveness of memantine add-on.