Sertindole in Asian Patients With Schizophrenia

This study is the first randomised clinical trial performed in Asia with sertindole, aiming at comparing sertindole efficacy and safety to that of another atypical antipsychotic. Sertindole is a limbic-selective antipsychotic agent with a unique neuropharmacological profile. Sertindole has shown significant improvements relative to placebo against both positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia (measured by PANSS total, PANSS negative and positive subscale scores). It is well tolerated and shows placebo-level incidence of extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS). Sertindole is associated with a dose-dependent increase in the QT interval, but this does not translate into an excess mortality with sertindole relative to that of other recently developed antipsychotics in their respective clinical development programmes.