Three drugs for use in neurology or psychiatry have filed with Health Canada and are expected to be approved in 2020. All have received FDA approval in the U.S. Here is a summary of what is waiting in the wings. Read More
Psychiatry
FDA advisors recommend intranasal ketamine in depression
February 20, 2019Two FDA advisory committees have voted 14-2 in favour of the use of esketamine for treatment-resistant depression (TRD). The advisors found that the intranasal drug is effective in TRD, and that the benefits outweigh the risks. The esketamine program received a Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) in 2013 based on a phase II study of an intravenous formulation in treatment-resistant depression (Singh et al. Biol Psychiatry 2016;80:424-431). Read More
Always online: problem or addiction?
February 13, 2019“Internet addiction” was first described in the dial-up era (Young KS. Psychol Rep 1996;79:899-902), with the prevalence steadily increasing with more widespread internet access. Five years ago, a meta-analysis reported a global prevalence of 6.0% (Cheng et al. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 2014;17:755-760). More recent estimates have found a prevalence of 17.7% among adolescents in rural Japan (Kojima et al. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2019;73:20-26), and 38.2% among university students in Japan (Kitazawa et al. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2018;72:531-539). The range in prevalence is largely due to a lack of consensus on diagnostic criteria, which in itself is a reflection of a more fundamental controversy: is Internet overuse an “addiction” or only problematic? Read More
Record number of FDA drug approvals in 2018
January 9, 2019The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved 59 new drugs in 2018 – a 30% increase over the number approved in 2017 and a 270% increase over the low-water mark set in 2016. Only 7 of the new approvals were for drugs used in neurology; there were no approvals of psychiatric agents. Read More
Canadian real-world study of aripiprazole LAI in schizophrenia
August 23, 2018POSTER DISCUSSION
Presented at the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology (ASCP) Annual Meeting, Miami, Florida, May 29 – June 1, 2018
The first Canadian naturalistic study in patients with schizophrenia has reported high rates of remission rates and low rates of relapse with long-acting aripiprazole over a one-year period (Oluboka et al. ASCP 2018; abstract). Read More