Project Summary

Rafael Stryjer, M.D. (Young Investigator 2004) of Beer Yaakov Mental Health Center, aims to study whether the beta-blocker atenolol could reduce some of the heart-related side effects experienced by people with schizophrenia taking the atypical antipsychotic clozapine. Although clozapine has provided great benefit for individuals with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, the drug leads to tachycardia and decreased heart rate variability, which may account for the increased arrhythmias, myocarditis, cardiomyopathy and sudden death observed in patients taking clozapine. The proposed study is a randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled, 12-week clinical trial in which 40 treatment-resistant schizophrenia patients will start an open label clozapine treatment and be randomly assigned to either adjunctive atenolol or placebo. Heart measures will be continually monitored using a variety of methods to assess if those taking atenolol have better cardiac function compared with the placebo-treated group.

Program Area: MULTIPLE FOCUS AREAS\Mood Disorders/Schizophrenia

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