The U.S.Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday approved the first new drug to treat people with schizophrenia in more than 30 years.Cobenfy, manufactured by Bristol Myers Squibb, combines two drugs, xanomeline and trospium chloride, and is taken as a twice-daily pill.
In clinical trials, this combination helped manage symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking, which are common in schizophrenia.“Schizophrenia is a leading cause of disability worldwide.It is a severe, chronic mental illness that is often damaging to a person’s quality of life,” Tiffany Farchione, M.D., director of the Division of Psychiatry, Office of Neuroscience in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in the approval announcement.“This drug takes the first new approach to schizophrenia treatment in decades," Farchione continued.
"This approval offers a new alternative to the antipsychotic medications people with schizophrenia have previously been prescribed.”Cobenfy offers new hope for people with schizophrenia, providing an innovative treatment option that could change how this condition is managed, according to Jelena Kunovac, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in the Department of Psychiatry."We are overdue for a medication that targets schizophrenia with a different mechanism of action," Kunovac told ABC News.MORE: Mom who struggled to accept her son's schizophrenia talks about crisis servicesThe first drugs for schizophrenia, including chlorpromazine and haloperidol – also known by the brand names Thorazine and Haldol, respectively – were introduced in the 1950s and revolutionized treatment of the disease.However, there have been very few new medications since then, with most subsequent FDA approvals being for variations of these older drugs.Most schizophrenia medications, broadly known as antipsychotics, work by changing dopamine levels, a brain chem...