Schizophrenia Drug Could Be Biggest Breakthrough Since 1950s

Existing drugs for treating schizophrenia have side effects that often cause patients to stop taking them, sometimes with tragic results. A new treatment approved by the FDA on Thursday, however, targets a different part of the brain, eliminating symptoms like drowsiness and weight gain, the Wall Street Journal reports. In clinical trials, Cobenfy, made by Bristol Myers Squibb, was effective in treating schizophrenia symptoms like delusions and hallucinations, reports ABC News. The company says prescriptions for the drug could begin in late October.

• Drugs developed in the 1950s, including Thorazine and Haldol, "revolutionized" treatment of schizophrenia at the time, per ABC News. But most treatments approved in the last 70 years have been variations of those drugs. Unlike the older treatments, which blocked dopamine receptors, Cobenfy changes levels of acetylcholine, a brain chemical that affects memory and attention.

• "Schizophrenia is a leading cause of disability worldwide. It is a severe, chronic mental illness that is often damaging to a person's quality of life," Tiffany Farchione at FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in the agency's approval announcement. "This drug takes the first new approach to schizophrenia treatment in decades." The agency says the condition affects around 1% of Americans.
• Samit Hirawat, Bristol Myers Squibb's chief medical officer, tells the Washington Post that schizophrenia patients are currently "all treated with pretty much the same medicines that work the same way," with side effects that cause around two-thirds of patients "to go off treatment within a year and a half or so."
• "Having a drug that doesn't produce the classic side effects of the antipsychotic medications means that a lot of people might just take these medications," John Krystal, a psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine, tells the Journal. Cobenfy has its own side effects, including nausea and indigestion, but Hirwat says they caused only 6% of patients in clinical trial to stop using the drug.

(More schizophrenia stories.)