A 34-year-old, Caucasian, male patient with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia for 14 years was admitted for psychiatric examination with complaints of repeating some words and washing hands frequently. He was on clozapine 100 mg/day treatment for 2 years. He was hospitalized due to exacerbation of psychotic and OCS.\nA 10-mg/day dose of aripiprazole was added on to his ongoing 100-mg/day clozapine treatment. At the end of the first week, clozapine dose increased to 150 mg/day and aripiprazole dose to 30 mg/day gradually. The plasma clozapine and norclozapine levels were over therapeutic level as 746.1 and 519.1 ng/mL at the end of the third week, so clozapine dose decreased to 100 mg/day. The clozapine andaripiprazole doses, plasma drug levels, and the clinical rating scale scores are given at Table \n. During discharge, his scores of PANSS was 50 (141 at admission), BPRS was 20 (74 at admission), and YBOCS was 20 (40 at admission).
A 51-year-old, Caucasian, male patient, diagnosed with schizophrenia was admitted following an exacerbation of OCS. He had contamination obsessions and cleaning compulsions for 10 years. He had persecution delusions. He was thinking that he was followed by police. He was hoarding garbage. He was brought to the emergency room by his family. Both the patient and his family reported that he had benefitted most from clozapine treatment. He was on clozapine 100 mg/day for 4 years. However, when the dose of clozapine was increased to a dose of 150 mg/day, an increase in OCS was observed. His family reported that a year ago after he had 10 sessions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), his psychotic and OCS decreased; but for the last 5–6 months, there was an exacerbation in psychotic and obsessive symptoms. Patient was hospitalized. During admission, his Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), and Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) scores were 151, 74, and 40, respectively.\nA 30-mg/day dose of aripiprazole was added on to his ongoing 100-mg/day dose of clozapine treatment. After 2 weeks of combination treatment with 100 mg/day clozapine and 10 mg/day aripiprazole, plasma levels of both drugs were measured to be low. Clozapine dose increased to 250 mg/day and aripiprazole doze increased to 30 mg/day gradually. At the end of the sixth week, during discharge, his PANSS, BPRS, and Y-BOCS scores were 50, 20, and 20, respectively.