Haloperidol dose for the acute phase of schizophrenia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Haloperidol is a benchmark, accessible antipsychotic against which the effects of newer treatments are gauged. OBJECTIVES: The primary goal of this review is to determine the best range of doses for haloperidol for the treatment of people acutely ill with schizophrenia. SEARCH STRATEGY: The reviewers searched Biological Abstracts (1980-1999), CINAHL (1982-1999), The Cochrane Library (1999, Issue 2), The Cochrane Schizophrenia Group's Register (December 1999), EMBASE (1980-1999), MEDLINE (1966-1999) and PsycLIT (1887-1999). They also inspected all references of all identified trials and included studies sought as a citation on SCISEARCH database (1980-1999). Authors of identified studies and pharmaceutical companies were also contacted. SELECTION CRITERIA: Studies were selected if they involved people being treated for acute schizophrenia, randomised to two or more dose ranges of non-depot haloperidol, and if they reported clinically meaningful outcomes. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: The reviewers independently and blindly inspected citations (10% reliability check), they ordered papers, and reliably re-inspected and quality assessed the full reports. The reviewers, again working independently, also extracted data. For homogeneous dichotomous data the relative risk (RR), 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated on an intention-to-treat basis. Reviewers assumed that people who left the study early or were lost to follow-up had a negative outcome. Weighted mean differences (WMD) were calculated for continuous outcomes that reported intention to treat (ITT), last observation carried forward (LOCF) data. Data was excluded if loss to follow-up was greater than 50%. MAIN RESULTS: Sixteen trials with nineteen different randomised dose comparisons were included. No studies reported data on relapse rates, quality of life and none compared >1.5-3.0 mg/day haloperidol to higher dose ranges. Using low doses (>3-7.5mg/day) did not clearly result in loss of efficacy (no clinically important improvement in global state, versus >7.5-15mg/day n=48, 1 RCT, RR 1.09 CI 0.7 to 1.8; versus >15-35mg/day n=81, 2 RCTs, 0.95 CI 0.8 to 1.2). Doses of haloperidol in the range of >3-7.5 mg/day had a lower rate of development of clinically significant extrapyramidal adverse effects than higher doses (clinically significant extrapyramidal adverse effects, versus >7.5-15mg/day n=64, 2 RCTs, RR 0.12 CI 0.01 to 2.1; versus >15-35mg/day n=144, 3 RCTs RR 0.59 CI 0.5 to 0.8, NNH 3 CI 2 to 6; versus >35mg/day n=86, 2 RCTs, RR 0.70 CI 0.5 to 1.1). All other comparisons between dose ranges did not yield statistically significant differences, but several, particularly with lower dose ranges, were underpowered to detect clinically meaningful differences. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS: No results are conclusive and all are based on small, short, studies. It would be understandable, however, if clinicians were cautious in prescribing doses in excess of 7.5 mg/day of haloperidol to a person with uncomplicated acute schizophrenia, and if people with schizophrenia were equally reticent to take greater doses. Further research is needed regarding the efficacy and tolerability of the >1.5-3.0 mg/day dose range.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".