Course: Dopamine Detours: Exploring Innovative Neurotransmitter Targets in the Treatment of Schizophrenia

CME Credits: 0.75

Released: 2024-12-20

After more than 70 years of treating the symptoms of schizophrenia with antipsychotics, it is now known that the hallmark and easily recognizable positive symptoms of schizophrenia — delusions, hearing voices — are often accompanied by equally devastating but less recognized symptoms in the cognitive and negative symptom domains. It’s a flawed but fundamental fact that while effective for some symptoms, traditional antipsychotics (all of which are based on blocking dopamine receptors) are largely inadequate because they don’t address two of the three symptom domains of schizophrenia: cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia (CIAS) and experiential and expressive negative symptoms. While excessive or dysregulated dopamine is still seen to be fundamental to the pathophysiology of this disease, recent research suggests the key to treating symptoms across all domains may lie in developing therapeutics that target different neurotransmitters. KarXT was recently approved by the FDA, marking a potential paradigm shift in schizophrenia treatment. Additionally, iclepertin is being tested in ongoing phase 3 clinical trials. Most clinicians are unaware of these new treatments' place in the development pipeline and the emerging clinical data. In this Data Dive activity, Dr. Daniel Javitt will review recently published articles and presentations from key psychiatry meetings to give psychiatrists and other clinicians who manage patients with schizophrenia the information they need to understand and use these new and emerging treatments.

Upon completion of this educational activity, participants should be able to:

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