Sodium Valproate as an Adjunctive Drug in Treatment of Schizophrenia

There are controversies regarding sodium valproate’s efficacy in psychosis. although somestudies have reported that it is effective in the management of positive symptoms and aggression in acutepsychosis, others have not found such an association. our study aims to investigate the effects of adjunctivesodium valproate in the pharmacological management of patients with schizophrenia.methods: in a double blind clinical trial, 32 schizophrenic patients (age 18 – 65), who were in immediateneed of admission, were randomly allocated into two groups. the first group was treated by combination ofsodium valproate and risperidone and the other by combination of placebo and risperidone. a diagnosis ofschizophrenia was established based on dsm-iv-tr criteria. all patients were assessed by panss on the 1st,14th and 28th days of the admission. the collected data were analyzed by student and paired t tests throughspss.results: comparison of panss mean score in two groups, before and after the trial, showed statisticallysignificant differences. the reduction in panss score was significantly higher in the group treated with sodiumvalproate than in placebo group (p= 0.006). although, there was a statistically significant reduction in positivesymptoms in both groups after 2 weeks of treatment (p= 0.048), the difference was not significant in the fourthweek (p= 0.88).conclusion: our study shows that if used as an adjunct to antipsychotic in the management of acutepsychosis, sodium valproate will speed up the recovery of positive symptoms.iranian journal of psychiatry and behavioral sciences (ijpbs), volume 1, number 1, spring and summer 2007: 12-15 .