Anorexia nervosa with chronic episodes for more than 30 years in a patient with a comorbid schizotypal personality disorder

Antipsychotic treatment of schizotypy and schizotypal personality disorder: a systematic review

Schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) is characterised by thought disorders, experiences of illusions, obsessive ruminations, bizarre or eccentric behaviour, cognitive problems and deficits in social functioning - symptoms that SPD shares with schizophrenia. Efforts have been undertaken to investigate the relationship between these conditions regarding genetics, pathophysiology, and phenomenology. However, treatment of SPD with antipsychotics has received less scientific attention. Embase and PubMed databases were searched using all known generic names of antipsychotics as search terms in combination with the following diagnostic terms: latent schizophrenia, schizotypal disorder, latent type schizophrenia, or SPD. Studies were categorised according to evidence level on the basis of their methodology from A, being the best, to E, being the worst. Five hundred and nine studies were retrieved and scrutinised. Sixteen studies, from the period 1972 to 2012, on antipsychotic treatment of SPD were extracted. Four studies were categorised as evidence level A, two as level B, six as level C and three as level D, with one study level E. Only four randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials, on subjects with well-defined diagnoses, exists. Only amisulpride, risperidone and thiothixene have been studied according to evidence level A. This result warrants further high quality studies of the effects of antipsychotic treatment of SPD.

Atypical antipsychotics and anorexia nervosa: a review

BACKGROUND

There is currently mixed opinion regarding the value of using atypical antipsychotics to treat anorexia nervosa (AN).

AIMS

To evaluate the literature on the use of atypical antipsychotics in AN.

METHOD

A review of all studies and clinical guidelines published before September 2009 involving use of an atypical antipsychotic in patients with AN. Analysis is by narrative synthesis.

RESULTS

Forty-three publications or study protocols were found, including four randomized-controlled trials, five open-label trials and 26 case reports. The most studied drugs were olanzapine, quetiapine and risperidone. Atypical antipsychotics appear safe and there is some evidence of positive effects on depression, anxiety and core eating disordered psychopathology in patients with anorexia nervosa. Currently there is insufficient evidence to confirm atypical antipsychotics enhance weight gain in this setting.

CONCLUSIONS

Further high quality evidence is needed in this area in order to provide practical guidance to clinicians. However, the main challenge is to persuade adequate numbers of AN patients to participate in research trials.

Transient psychosis in anorexia nervosa: review and case report

Psychotic symptoms are a key feature in eating disorders. Restrictive-type anorectics are more prone to suffer them, coherent with recent neurocognitive findings reporting attentional and processing deficits in restrictive anorexia partially common to schizophrenia. Psychotic crises urge psychiatrists to make an accurate differential diagnosis with endogenous psychoses and carefully judge treatment options. If attentively attended, such crises can give us clues to understand the patient s functioning and consider new strategies. We report two transient psychotic episodes in restrictive-type anorectic female patients, one with a previous experience. Onset of psychotic symptoms was related to severe malnutrition only in one of them (body mass index <15). We discuss risk factors, clinical presentation and treatment, focusing on the emotional disturbances maintained after recovery. Causes for psychotic features in these patients are reviewed and treatment individually tailored. An integrative understanding of eating disorders as a unique meeting point between psychosis and neurosis is encouraged.