Comparison of Antipsychotic Combination Treatment of Olanzapine and Amisulpride to Monotherapy

A study to examine whether an antipsychotic combination treatment of olanzapine and amisulpride is more effective than olanzapine and amisulpride alone.

Polypharmacy in antipsychotic therapy is an important issue when treating patients with schizophrenia. It is not well confirmed that a combination of two antipsychotic drugs lead to therapeutic benefit in contrast to monotherapy. However there is a highly frequent practice of combining atypical non-clozapine treatment that could be due to potential benefits when seeking alternatives to a high rate of non-response in acute phase. Therefore there is a need for further trials of sufficient power to address efficacy and safety issues of this regimen. Combining two selected atypical drugs in a complementary way may minimize side-effects and enhance efficacy. In order to specify these advantages it is intend to examine approaches to combination treatment: Amisulpride and olanzapine show complementing receptor binding profiles and have shown to have efficacy and good tolerability when administered in combination in retrospective studies. The object of this trial is to study whether acutely ill patients with combination of amisulpride and olanzapine are more frequently in symptomatic remission after 8 weeks than those with olanzapine or amisulpride monotherapy.