Functional outcomes in schizophrenia: a comparison of olanzapine and haloperidol in a European sample

The primary aim of this study was to compare functional outcomes between pa tients with schizophrenia treated with olanzapine or haloperidol in Europe. The sample consisted of European patients from a large, international, dou ble-blind, randomized clinical trial. Patients were randomized to receive e ither olanzapine (n = 520) or haloperidol (n = 258) for a 6-week acute phas e followed by a 46-week maintenance phase for responders. Olanzapine-treate d patients experienced superior improvements compared to haloperidol-treate d patients on all efficacy measures assessed in both phases. A greater perc entage of olanzapine-treated patients had greater than or equal to 20% impr ovement in the Quality of Life Scale total score during both the acute (50. 0% versus 31.0%, P = 0.071) and maintenance (69.5% versus 41.7%, P = 0.006) phases compared to haloperidol-treated patients. For patients who entered the maintenance phase as outpatients, olanzapine-treated patients were sign ificantly less likely to require subsequent hospitalization compared to hal operidol-treated patients (P = 0.001). A significantly greater percentage o f the olanzapine group compared to the haloperidol group worked part-time o r full-time (15.1% versus 5.3%, P = 0.018), participated in useful work gre ater than or equal to 75% of the time (21.0% versus 10.5%, P = 0.038), and socialized more than once a month (53.8% versus 37.9%, P = 0.004) during th e maintenance phase. The findings from this study suggest that olanzapine's clinical profile leads to reduced hospitalization and improvements in work and social functioning superior to that achieved with haloperidol treatmen t. (C) 2000 Lippincott williams & Wilkins.