From the July 18th edition of Psychiatric News:By Joan Arehart-TreichelTo read the entire article, click here:
A small study of patients with schizophrenia taking an alpha-7 receptor agonist (DMXB-A) found a lessening of negative symptoms in those taking the experimental compound. Subjects also reported better organized thinking and behavior.
For a few years now, Robert Freedman, M.D., chair of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and colleagues have been undertaking a valiant quest to find a drug that improves cognition and eradicates negative symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia—something that available medications for schizophrenia generally fail to do.
Specifically Freedman and his team have been trying to determine whether drugs that soup up the action of the alpha 7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain—the so-called alpha 7 receptor agonists—might be the answer.
Two years ago, they reported very preliminary, but heartening results for an alpha 7 receptor agonist called DMXB-A. Eleven subjects with schizophrenia were found to experience significantly better cognition a day after receiving DMXB-A than a day after getting a placebo. Improvement in attention was especially notable. Results were published in the June 2006 Archives of General Psychiatry [AJP] (Psychiatric News, July 21, 2006).
Now Freedman and his group report more encouraging results regarding DMXB-A. The results, which first appeared online in AJP in Advance on April 1, will be published in the August print edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Freedman is editor in chief of the journal.
Also see:
Initial Phase 2 Trial of a Nicotinic Agonist in Schizophrenia
Molecular model of the alpha-7 nicotinic receptor courtesy of Dr. Jerrel L. Yakel.
