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.
Ms. A, a 40-year-old woman diagnosed with a residual schizophrenia [] was admitted following an exacerbation of psychotic symptoms with a predominance of anxiety despite 700 mg/d of clozapine for two years. The clinical scores and the trough plasma concentrations of clozapine and norclozapine at admission were CGI : 5; total PANSS: 123; positive: 17/49; negative: 18/49; excited component: 12/35; general: 39/112; Hamilton-anxiety: 14/56; clozapine: 896 ng/mL; norclozapine: 551 ng/mL, respectively (clozapine therapeutic range: 350–600 ng/mL [–]). Because of the risks of seizures, the dose was reduced to 500 mg/d, and aripiprazole (10 mg/d) was added. Clozapine and norclozapine plasma concentrations measured after 10 days were decreased according to the reduction of the dose (615 ng/mL and 478 ng/mL, resp.). The aripiprazole plasma concentration after 10 days was 282 ng/mL. Following a clinical reduction of the anxiety, the patient was discharged from the hospital three weeks after the addition of aripiprazole.\nA followup over 6 months did not reveal any change in the CGI and PANSS scores (at 6 months: CGI : 5; total PANSS: 125; positive: 18/49; negative: 23/49; excited component 10/35; general: 38/112). On the other hand, the Hamilton-anxiety score diminished progressively to 12, 7, and 8 after one, three, and 6 months, respectively. Clozapine and norclozapine plasma levels were stable over this period (at the sixth month: 608 ng/mL, 443 ng/mL, and 75 kg, resp.), and the comedications (clorazepate 20 mg/d, valsartane 40 mg/d, zopiclone 7,5 mg/d, and tamsulosine 0.4 mg/d) were not modified. No reports are describing an impact on anxiety by the antihypertensive comedication by valsartane (an angiotensin II receptor antagonist) and tamsulosine (peripheral α1-antagonist). There is no significant pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic interactions of that comedication and the antipsychotic/anxiolytic treatments.