Posted by med_empowered on September 6, 2008, at 12:59:52
In reply to Re: Is Abilify pretty safe concerning tardive dys?, posted by Nadezda on September 4, 2008, at 22:27:45
my doc says abilify is the "cleanest atypical on the market" and that it only rarely causes TD. Then again...I've stopped taking the Abilify since my mania subsided, so I guess I'm not putting too much stock into what he says.
Once, when I was on Abilify for a couple months, I quit suddenly and had jerks and twitches for a couple weeks after withdrawal. They went away, but it was a frightening experience.
Abilify has been linked to TD, NMS, and "tardive akathisia"--a kind of akathisia that can persist long after the medication is withdrawn. I think its creepy that Abilify is so new but there's already at least one case of Tardive akathisia; usually, tardive akathisia is seen with severe tardive dyskinesia and is a late stage complication of neuorleptic use.
So...I don't know. The manufacturer-funded trials make it seem clean, but those trials way under-reported/under-estimated akathisia and may also have painted Abilify as being more weight-neutral than it actually is....it can take years for a drug's TD potential to be known, and with all the factors that go into developing TD (diagnosis of patient, gender,age, time on medication, previous treatments, co-medications, etc.), it can be really hard to say "Abilify has an annual TD rate of xxx%"
I'd just say..if you can avoid taking Abilify or any other antipsychotic, you might want to do that.
poster:med_empowered
thread:850398
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080903/msgs/850652.html