Adjunctive Nadolol in the Treatment of Acutely Aggressive Schizophrenic Patients

Background: This study assessed the safety and efficacy of nadolol 120 mg/day compared with placebo, when administered adjunctively to neuroleptic in a group of acutely aggressive schizophrenic patients.

Method: Thirty-four male patients enrolled in this double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. The subjects were evaluated with the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) and the Simpson-Angus Neurologic Rating Scale for extrapyramidal effects. The total BPRS score as well as three factors, thought disturbance, hostility, and activation, was analyzed.

Results: Compared with those who received placebo, the patients taking nadolol showed significant improvement on total BPRS score, particularly on the thought disturbance and activation factors, after the first treatment week (p = .05). By the end of the second treatment week, the patients taking placebo also began to show improvement, and the group differences were no longer significant. The patients treated with nadolol showed significantly more improvement on Simpson-Angus scores than those who received placebo (p = .03). However, there was no significant correlation between BPRS and Simpson- Angus changes. In the nadolol group, patients with and without akathisia showed no significant difference in their BPRS scores.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that adjunctive nadolol may be useful in the treatment of acutely aggressive schizophrenic patients by inducing a more rapid and consistent decrease of overall psychiatric symptoms and by reducing the extrapyramidal effects. Our results raise the possibility that the mechanism of action of nadolol on psychiatric symptoms in schizophrenic patients may be different from the mechanism of improvement of neuroleptic-induced extrapyramidal symptoms and akathisia. Nadolol may be a helpful adjunctive treatment for schizophrenic patients in general and not just for those with a high hostility level.