Antipsychotics Flashcards
What is psychosis?
A loss of touch with reality, typified by the presence of psychotic symptoms and generally associated with a loss of insight
What are the three main symptom domains of psychosis?
- Positive symptoms
- Negative symptoms
- Disorganisation symptoms
What are the positive symptoms in psychosis?
- Hallucinations
- Delusions
- Thought disorder
What are the negative symptoms in psychosis?
- Alogia
- Apathy
- Avolition
- Asocialty
- Affective blunting
What are the disorganisation symptoms in psychosis?
Bizarre, chaotic and agitated behaviour
What regulates motivation and facilitates reinforcement and reward?
Release of dopamine from the ventral tegmental area, through the prefrontal cortex, amygdala and into the nucleus accumbens via the mesolimbic pathway
This regulates motivation and facilitates reinforcement and reward
What are psychotomimetic drugs?
Dopamine increasing drugs eg. cocaine, amphetamine
Which area is key for the negative and cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia?
The prefrontal cortex
Which areas are related to negative symptoms in schizophrenia?
Dopamine deficiency in the mesocortical circuit and ventromedial prefrontal cortex
Which areas are related to cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia?
Dopamine deficiency in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Which areas are linked to aggressive and impulsive symptoms in schizophrenia?
The orbitofrontal cortex and its connections to the amygdala
What are the four dopamine pathways in the brain?
- Mesolimbic (positive symptoms)
- Mesocortical (negative symptoms)
- Nigrostriatal (extrapyrimidal side effects)
- Tuberoinfundibular (hyperprolactinaemia)
What does the mesolimbic pathway connect?
Dopaminergic cell bodies in the ventral tegmental area (reward, motivation, cognition and aversion) of the midbrain to the ventral striatum of the basal ganglia (limbic region - tracking the subjective value of stimuli, signalling the presence of/ expectation of reward and encoding errors and outcomes of predictions) in the forebrain
What does the mesocortical pathway connect?
Dopaminergic cell bodies in the VTA to the prefrontal cortex - involved in cognitive control, motivation and emotional response
What does the nigrostriatal pathway connect?
Projects from the dopaminergic cell bodies in the substantia nigra (midbrain) to axons terminating in the striatum/ basal ganglia - pathway controls motor movements and is part of the extrapyrimidal nervous system
What does hyperactivity in the nigrostriatal pathway lead to?
Hyperkinetic movement disorders such as chorea, dyskinesia and tics
Where does the tuberinfundibular pathway connect?
Projects from dopaminergic neurones in the hypothalamus to the anterior pituitary gland - normally these dopaminergic neurones inhibit the release of prolactin
(they become less active during the postpartum period to allow for lactation)
What are antipsychotics used for?
- Treatment of psychosis
- Mood stabilisation in BPAD
- Antidepressant augmentation in depression, anxiety, OCD
- Treatment of Gilles de la Tourette’s
How are antipsychotics classified?
- Typical (first generation)
- Atypical (second generation)
What are the typical antipsychotics?
- Chlorpromazine (first to be synthesised)
- Haloperidol
- Zuclopenthixol (clopixol)
- Flupentixol (depixol)
Which receptors do typical antipsychotics widely act on?
D2 dopamine receptors
What are the atypical antipsychotics?
- Clozapine (first to be synthesised)
- Olanzapine
- Quetiapine
- Risperidone
- Paliperidone
- Aripiprazole
- Lurasidone
- Cariprazine
Where do atypical antipsychotics act?
Less affinity for dopamine, more on serotonin and 5-HT2A
Which atypical antipsychotics work as partial agonists?
- Aripiprazole
- Cariprazine
- Luradisone
A partial agonist works as an antagonist in the presence of a full native agonist
What is the difference between first and second generation antipsychotics?
Second generation:
- Lower risk of extrapyrimidal side effects
- Antagonists of 5HT-2A serotonin receptors which has downstream effects to increase the dopamine within the nigrostriatal dopamine pathway
How do second generation antipsychotics reduce the risk of extrapyrimidal side effects?
Blocking 5HT-2A receptors can reduce antipsychotic receptor occupancy from 80-60% within the nigrostriatal pathway, reducing the risk of EPSEs
What are the side effects of clozapine?
- Sedation (blocks histamine-H1 receptors)
- Increased appetite (weight gain) (H1)
- Neutropenia
- Leucopenia
- Agranulocytosis
- Prothrombotic (increased risk of DVT/PE)
- Severe constipation
- Hypersalivation
- Cardiomyopathy
- Tachycardia
What is the risk if clozapine is abruptly stopped?
High risk of rebound psychosis within 2 weeks
Why should clozapine be started at a low dose and titrated slowly?
Due to the risk of cardiovascular instability
What is the protocol if clozapine is stopped for more than 48 hours?
It must be re-titrated
When is the highest risk of neutropenia/ leucopenia/ agranulocytosis with clozapine?
In the first 18 weeks
Where do patients have to be registered if they’re taking clozapine?
With a national clozapine monitoring service
Eg:
- Zaponex treatment access system
- Clozaril
- Denzapine
How often is FBC monitored for patients on clozapine?
- Weekly
- Then fortnightly
- Then monthly after one year of treatment
What are the green, amber and red results of clozapine blood tests?
- Green - ok to continue
- Amber - continue but increase FBC monitoring to twice weekly
- Red - stop immediately
What are the symptoms of agranulocytosis?
- Ulcer development in mucous membranes
- Susceptible to bacterial infections
- Sepsis occurs to bacterial contamination
Which colour blood bottle is used for clozapine monitoring?
EDTA purple top