Once-monthly long-acting Injectables (LAIs) showed lower rates of hospitalization when compared to daily oral injectables and biweekly LAIs, according to new research shown presented at Psych Congress by Christoph Correll, The Zucker Hillside Hospital; Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell; The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research; Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berli.

Researchers aimed to document the impact of LAI administration frequency for patients with schizophrenia.

“Although the benefits associated with the use of long-acting injectable antipsychotic agents (LAIs) over oral antipsychotic agents (OAs) have been widely documented, the impact of administration frequency on clinical outcomes remains unclear,” states Christoph Correll and co-researchers.

Transitioning Care of Patients With Severe Mental Illness

Researchers conducted a network meta-analysis and a targeted literature review to assess the correlation between incidence rates of hospitalization and administration frequency of LAIs or OAs in patients with schizophrenia. Of 456 reviewed studies, a total of 9 nonrandomized cohort studies of patients with schizophrenia gathered from PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar, were included in the meta-analysis. All studies included patients being treated with atypical OAs of LAIs and included reported adjusted incidence rate ratio of hospitalization. Two of the studies compared once-monthly LAIs to biweekly LAIs, and 7 studies compared daily OAs to once-monthly LAIs.

Researchers observed higher incidence rates of hospitalization for patients receiving daily OAs when compared to once-monthly LAIs, and higher incidence rates of hospitalization for patients receiving biweekly LAIs when compared to once-monthly LAIs. Daily OAs and biweekly LAIs had similar incidence rates of hospitalization.

“In cohort studies, which likely reflect real-world samples closer than randomized controlled trials, once-monthly LAIs had the lowest incidence rate of hospitalization compared with biweekly LAIs and daily OAs,” concluded Correll et al.

Reference
Correll Christoph, Cook Erin, et al. Network meta-analysis of cohort studies involving oral and long-acting injectable antipsychotic agents: administration frequency and incidence rate of hospitalization in schizophrenia. Poster presented at: Psych Congress; October 29-November 1, 2021; San Antonio, TX.