Aripiprazol-Depot für ambulante Patienten mit Schizophrenie: Patientenzentrierte Outcomes einer nichtinterventionellen Studie

In this non-interventional study, outpatients with schizophrenia were treated with aripiprazole once-monthly for 24 weeks. Psychosocial functioning and subjective wellbeing of the patients was monitored. In this analysis, the effectiveness of aripiprazole once-monthly regarding patient-centered outcomes in real-life conditions in a naturalistic population is described and the patient's ratings of effectiveness and tolerability are compared to the physician's ratings. 242 predominantly symptomatically stable patients were enrolled into the non-interventional, prospective, multicentric study. The mean age was 43.1 ± 15.1 years and 55 % were male. Patients had been pretreated with oral aripiprazole for a mean of 9.7 ± 22.3 months before being switched to long-acting injectable treatment. Among the outcomes were psychosocial functioning (Global assessment of functioning, GAF), wellbeing (WHO-5 well-being index, WHO-5) and ratings of effectiveness and tolerability by the patients and physicians. Furthermore, the use of additional therapies during the study was gathered, as well as the incidence of adverse events. At study start, psychosocial functioning was markedly diminished with 47.0 ± 13.9 on the GAF scale. During treatment, it improved significantly and continuously to 60.2 ± 17.0. Patient's subjective well-being (as a measure of quality of life) was also diminished at study start, amounting to 10.6 ± 5.6 points on the WHO-5 index. During treatment, this improved by 4.8 ± 6.9 to 15.4 ± 5.5 points. In younger patients ≤ 35 years, significantly larger improvements in GAF and numerically larger improvements in WHO-5 were detected. The effectiveness and tolerability of aripiprazole once-monthly was deemed as similarly good to very good by most patients and physicians. Only few adverse events occurred. After initiation of aripiprazole once-monthly, significant positive effects on functioning and well-being were found during the course of six months. Although the patients were deemed symptomatically stable already under oral medication, further improvements could be achieved with aripiprazole once-monthly. Currently available data on aripiprazole once-monthly are complemented here by a naturalistic setting.