Some side effects of antipsychotics

Abstract

Background

Pharmacological treatments for chronic diseases cause side effects. It is important to identify which of these effects could be avoided because it is a cause to drop the treatment. In the chronic psychiatric illness, one of the problems is the induction of changes in prolactin (PRL) serum.

Purpose

Review of the literature that has been published to assess the association between different types of antipsychotic drugs and prolactin levels.

Method

Literature search on PubMed, NCBI literature in the last three years using MeSH terms: “prolactin” and “antipsychotics”.

Conclusions

The increase of prolactin is a common effect poorly studied in the past. After several studies have been able to achieve treatments, called “atypical”, which cause less effect on this substance. For example, asenapine, olanzapine and zyprasidone have a slight effect on PRL levels. Aripripazole could even result in lower levels probably by partial agonism on dopamine receptors. Therefore, we have to make a good clinical practice taking into account the effectiveness and tolerance and interpersonal variation.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.