Editorial

From 2022 onwards, Pharmacotherapy in Psychiatry and Neurology will be issued not quarterly but half-yearly. The issue of Pharmacotherapy in Psychiatry and Neu rology for the first half-year of 2022 contains one exper imental paper and four review papers. It begins with an article by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal on the effect of psychotropic drugs on the occurrence and the course of COVID-19. The literature of 2020–2022 on the anti depressant, antipsychotic, mood-stabilising, and other drugs was reviewed. Some drugs exert the antiviral effect on SARS-CoV-2, some can diminish the risk, and some can act therapeutically on the infection. The most data on a favorable effect on infection concern fluvoxamine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). Other antidepressant drugs can diminish the risk of intubation or death. SSRI drugs act therapeutically in post-covid depression. Antiviral effects of chlorpromazine and halo peridol were not confirmed in clinical observations. The use of long-acting injectable atypical antipsychotic drugs may decrease the risk of infection. Despite the evidence of antiviral action of lithium – against herpes in clinical studies and against coronaviruses in experimental papers –until now, the research data on the effect of lithium on the occurrence and the course of COVID-19 infection has not been sufficient to formulate firm conclusions. Also, the data on the use of valproate is equivocal despite pro pitious theoretical premises. In the article, the potential of other drugs used in psychiatric therapeutics, such as amantadine, disulfiram, hydroxyzine, cannabidiol, me latonin, and memantine, was discussed.
The experimental paper, with Krystyna Jaracz as the first author, comes from the Department of Psychiatric Nursing, Poznan University of Medical Sciences. The study aimed at analysing the relationships between the kind of pharmacological treatment and negative symptoms, depression, social function, and quality of life in 56 schizophrenia patients hospitalised for the first time from 11 to 15 years ago. Ninety percent of the patients received antipsychotic medications throughout the whole observation period. Among them, 3/4 were treated with antipsychotics only and 1/4 received antipsychotics and antidepressants. The results obtained show that the kind of treatment in terms of monotherapy (antipsychotic only) vs polytherapy (antipsychotics and antidepress ants) did not...


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