Thursday, August 25, 2005

I am finished with drugs

I have been writing a lot about drugs for treating PDS, and this post is going to be the last for a while.

My blog is getting a bit too interactive! Yesterday I received an email by a prospective participant of the Paraglone study. For the sake of science, I should probably not speculate about the study until its end. However, as the study is very likely a double blind study, I guess writing on a blog about the subject and "experimental subjects" reading the posts does not bias the results?

Holger Stenzel provided me with more information on drugs & PDS, only enhancing his junkie status! :-) I am just kidding. In my opinion, he deals with the issue in a frightfully rational and responsible way. He told me and I read about his experience with two drugs: Risperidone and Olanzapine. He took the medication under the supervision of a neurologist. He discontinued use of Risperidone after only a brief period, and has been taking Olanzapine for two and a half years, but is now only taking it every second day. He has spoken about his experience in German discussion forums, and made his reports available to researchers and pharmaceutical companies. To summarise, he says that he has been noticeably more fluent (he talks about a reduction of 30%) but with some side effects. He also said that the German discussion forums have been quite ideological about his reports/work. I have read his posts, but I wholeheartedly support him, as his descriptions and review of the literature strikes me as very objective and informed. In fact, I was wondering myself whether, given the opportunity, I would try a drug myself.

Holger has also sent me links to two interesting articles: on Olazapine, and a review by Maguire and others.

He also told me about this on-going "pilot study of the efficacy and safety of Aripiprazole in the treatment of stuttering (co-PI), 2004 to 2005." (check here) Aripiprazole was developed by Britol-Myers Squibb Company to treat schizophrenia. Its effects are novel in the sense that it is not only antagonistic to dopamine receptors, but can be partially agonistic in case of lower-than-normal activity. Therefore, a stabilisation of the neurotransmitter system is expected.

The Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior from the University of California at Irvine has a budget of $5 million dollar to work together with pharmaceutical companies on Phase I-III Clinical Trials, among them on PDS.

No comments: