Admission to hospital was not considered an adequate proxy for relapse as service provision now means many people remain in the community despite experiencing considerable symptomatology [Bebbington

et al. 2006]. The patients were recruited through their consultant psychiatrist. The exclusion criteria were: patients that had chronic symptomatology, or insidious onsets where the dating of relapse would be impossible to pinpoint to within 1 week; first and early onset cases with less than 2 years treatment with antipsychotics; patients CCI-779 in vivo prescribed the low-potency D2 antagonists clozapine or quetiapine; patients prescribed the D2 partial agonist aripiprazole; the existence Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of organic brain disorder; patients noncompliant with, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical or not prescribed antipsychotics prior to relapse; those abusing illicit drugs and alcohol. Ethical considerations The study was conducted under the auspices of the Multi-Centre Research Ethics Committee that granted ethical approval. English was the first language of each participant and written consent was obtained from each participant. Results A total of 41 people were interviewed and, of these, 16 (39%) exhibited AIMs, a putative feature of dopamine supersensitivity psychosis. Two subsequently died Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical (both AIM +ve

males) so follow-up data were available on 39 individuals (Table 1). There were 20 women (mean age 45) and 21 (19 at follow up) males (mean age 46). The AIM groups did not differ in age or gender distribution but they were statistically

more likely to live in a care home (p = 0.03 two-tailed). Table 1. Background variables. Abnormal movements were not associated with the type of antipsychotic prescribed Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical (see Table 2). The use of typical antipsychotic drugs (oral or depot) was not over-represented Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in those with AIMs. Indeed only one of the AIM +ve group was taking a typical oral, whereas a third of the AIM -ve group was taking oral typicals and this almost reached statistical significance (p = 0.06 two-tailed). The prevalence of anticholinergic use and the total exposure to antipsychotic drugs (chlorpromazine equivalents) was similar in the AIM +ve and AIM -ve groups. Table 2. Treatment at time of relapse. A total of 17 patients (41.5%) reported life events that had occurred prior to relapse and 13 were AIM -ve relapsers, but this predicted difference [Fallon and Dursun, 2011] was at the trend level of significance (p = 0.08 one-tailed). Minor life events were not recorded in this study. Adding the patients with life these events and/or AIM +ve, the checklist identified a cause of relapse for 29 patients (71%). An analysis was made of all patients without life events to remove this as a possible confounding variable, 12 AIM +ve, 12 AIM -ve. This confirmed the whole group findings that those with supersensitivity psychosis were highly likely to experience residual symptoms and were less likely to have made a full recovery at 6 months from relapse.