Author(s): Anna Capasso and Walter Milano
The schizophrenia is a psychiatric disease, characterized by symptoms alterating the mind, behaviour and emotion. The terms antipsychotic and neuroleptic define a group of drugs mainly used to treat schizophrenia. The antipsychotics may be divided into two classes: classic or typical and atypical. The paliperidone, the major metabolite of risperidone, shares with the native drug the characteristics of receptorial binding and the serotonin (5HT2A) and dopamine (D2) antagonism Paliperidone is available in a prolonged release formulation and it allows the administration once daily. Besides, the paliperidone has a pharmacological action independent of CYT P450, thus, several pharmacological interactions would be avoided to interference with the activity of the CYP2D6, that is known to have involved in the metabolism of the 25% of the drugs.