Cost-effectiveness of amisulpride compared with risperidone in patients with schizophrenia

Impact of antipsychotic medication on the cost of schizophrenia

“…Results of the study indicate no effective differences with regard to symptom reduction. Medication costs were found to be significantly lower for amisulpride than risperidone but no differences in total direct costs were observed [77].…”

“…With one exception, all RCTs were conducted in the USA. Two studies analyzed the incremental cost effectiveness of clozapine in comparison with conventional antipsychotics [75,131], three studies compared olanzapine with conventional agents [7,38,76], one study compared olanzapine with risperidone [74] and in one trial, amisulpride was compared with risperidone [77].…”

“…Nicholls and colleagues conducted a double-blind multicenter RCT of 198 patients with paranoid, disorganized, undifferentiated or residual schizophrenia who experienced a recent worsening of symptoms and had no satisfactory symptom response under prior neuroleptic treatment [77]. Furthermore, patients were excluded from the study if they were placebo responders or if they had predominantly negative symptoms or if they had one of several chronic somatic diseases or risk factors [77].…”

“…Furthermore, patients were excluded from the study if they were placebo responders or if they had predominantly negative symptoms or if they had one of several chronic somatic diseases or risk factors [77]. Effects and costs of antipsychotic treatment were observed prospectively by standardized procedures for 6 months.…”

“…Since the introduction of the second-generation atypical antipsychotics, the number of pharmacoeconomic evaluations of antipsychotic drug treatment has been significantly increased because the higher prices of atypical in comparison with conventional antipsychotics made it necessary for pharmaceutical companies to provide evidence for the economic efficiency of the newer drugs as well as for their effectiveness [6,10,11,72,73]. Nevertheless, the number of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the cost effects of antipsychotic medical treatment is rather low and only seven studies (TABLE 2) were identified in this review [7,38,[74][75][76][77][78]. Double-blind RCTs are regarded as the gold standard of empirical evidence in medicine, an increasing number of experts criticize the limited generalizability of results from RCTs due to the artificial treatment conditions which are often far from ordinary clinical practice [79][80][81].…”