Six-month treatment with atypical antipsychotic drugs decreased frontal-lobe levels of glutamate plus glutamine in early-stage first-episode schizophrenia Full Text
Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 04/20/2012  Clinical Article

Goto N et al. – Taking these findings into account, the glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons are implicated in early–stage first–episode schizophrenia, but in complex ways.

• The authors used administered 6 months of atypical antipsychotic drugs and used proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy to evaluate the results.

• They found that the administration of atypical antipsychotic drugs for 6 months decreased the glutamate plus glutamine/creatine ratio in the frontal lobe.
• These results suggest that the administration of atypical antipsychotic drugs for at least 6 months decreased glutamatergic neurotransmissions in the frontal lobe in early-stage first-episode schizophrenia, but there was no difference in frontal-lobe levels between patients and control subjects before administration.