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Clozapine, sold under the brand name Clozaril among others, is a psychiatric medication and was the first atypical antipsychotic to be discovered. [6] It is primarily used to treat people with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder who have had an inadequate response to two other antipsychotics, or who have been unable to tolerate other drugs due to extrapyramidal side effects.
Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is a branch of clinical chemistry and clinical pharmacology that specializes in the measurement of medication levels in blood.Its main focus is on drugs with a narrow therapeutic range, i.e. drugs that can easily be under- or overdosed. [1]
Blood-based biomarkers those are obtained from plasma or serum samples. Since the prevalence of metabolic syndromes is increased in schizophrenia patients, makers of those syndromes have been common targets of research. Differences between patients and controls have been found in insulin levels, insulin resistance, and glucose tolerance. [50]
Blood tests for monitoring could be performed if you already have a diagnosis and your physician wants to make sure the treatments are working and to check for any negative side effects, Vasagar said.
As clozapine suppresses the development of bone marrow, in turn reducing white blood cells which can lead to infection, blood tests are taken for the first six months on this medication. [19] The risk of experiencing agranulocytosis due to clozapine treatment is higher in elderly people, children, and adolescents. [16]
Clozapine is an effective treatment for those who respond poorly to other drugs ("treatment-resistant" or "refractory" schizophrenia), [94] but it has the potentially serious side effect of agranulocytosis (lowered white blood cell count) in less than 4% of people. [95]
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He has also developed a genetic test predicting response to clozapine and the risk of agranulocytosis. This test is marketed in the UK by Psychiatric Genetics Ltd . Most recently Taylor has tackled the controversial subjects of discontinuation of antidepressants [ 19 ] [ 20 ] and antipsychotics.