Psychopharmacologic Treatment Response of HIV-Infected Patients to Antipsychotic Medications

Because this piece does not have an abstract, we have provided for your benefit the first 3 sentences of the full text.

As noted in last month’s column, the atypical antipsychotics have generally been preferred to typical agents in the treatment of psychotic symptoms in patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus. However, these drugs also cause metabolic syndrome as a toxicity, which may exacerbate an existing metabolic syndrome toxicity (referred to as "lipodystrophy syndrome") commonly experienced by these patients and caused by long-term use of antiretroviral (ARV) medications. Hence, a more cautious deliberation over preference for the atypicals is warranted.’ ‹