Real-world effectiveness of psychopharmacological treatment
Nowadays, most treatment guidelines are largely based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs), but also observational studies can give important contribution to evidence-based medicine. The patient populations in RCTs are highly selected, and follow-up periods are short and, therefore, the generalization of RCTs to real-world settings is questionable. Also, studying infrequent phenomena, such as death and suicide, is practically impossible in RCTs. We study the real-world effectiveness of psychopharmacological treatments of psychoses and depression by using nationwide hospital discharge, prescription and mortality registers.
We have shown that in the treatment of schizophrenia, use of antipsychotic is associated with decreased mortality compared with no use of antipsychotic, and clozapine is associated with lower mortality than other antipsychotics. We have also observed that benzodiazepine use is linked with increased mortality, whereas use of an antidepressant or several concomitant antipsychotics is not. In first episode patients, use of depot antipsychotic injections leads to decreased risk of rehospitalization.
We study also the etiology and neurobiology of schizophrenia and violent behavior with genetics and stem cell research.
Research Projects
- Studies on effectiveness on psychopharmacological treatments of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder
- Studies on neurobiology of schizophrenia, psychopathy, and antisocial personality