#cobenfy

Experts expressed enthusiasm Friday after US health regulators approved the first new form of treatment for schizophrenia in decades. The drug, called Cobenfy and developed by US pharma giant Bristol Myers Squibb, works differently from existing treatments, targeting the so-called cholinergic receptors, not the dopamine receptors. "This drug takes the first new approach to schizophrenia treatment in decades," Tiffany Farchione, a top official in the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said in a statement Thursday.

So, I have my alarm set for 5 am to take my morning dose, and 7pm for my evening dose. I'm hoping this will give me a decent window of time to plan and work on commissions .

Cobenfy (xanomeline/trospium chloride) has just been approved for schizophrenia treatment in the US. This is huge. It's the first antipsychotic in decades to not target dopamine directly. It's got a much, much better side-effect profile, and it might work for negative and cognitive symptoms.

FOR MORE READING – news report/patient-centred plain language overview: See here.

FOR MORE READING – scientific evidence report: See here (note: the drug is referred to as 'KarXT' in this report).

I couldn't be happier right now. People with psychosis go through so, so much trying to find medications that are both useful and tolerable, and psychiatry has historically neglected psychotic people's needs so, so awfully. (Not to mention how little there is that actually helps with anything other than positive symptoms.) So I'm really, really hoping that with the proof that we can, in fact, make antipsychotics that aren't based on the same old pharmacological things we've tried before. Cobenfy is a muscarinic agonist/antagonist in fixed combination – and it also indirectly regulates dopamine and glutamate. And given that we know both dopamine and NMDA are probably involved in schizophrenia somehow – AND that treating things to do with either is hard – this is so, so, so exciting.

This isn't to say Cobenfy doesn't have side-effects (the most common ones being nausea, constipation, dyspepsia, vomiting, hypertension, dry mouth, and tachycardia. We also know that there is a small risk of extrapyramidal symptoms, and that prolactin-related side-effects do happen, unfortunately). We don't know much about how it affects folks in the long-term, or much about the long-term tardive dyskinesia risk. But even so, it's progress compared to some of the worse antipsychotic side-effects.

Moreover, there is a possibility it might be useful for negative and cognitive symptoms. Holy crap.

They wanted to have me on cobenfy but I explained my insurance won't cover it. Apparently there's a patient support program that pays for your medication for a year free of charge if you meet the income requirements. It sounds like I qualify so they want to try it.

Latuda doesn't clash with cobenfy so they're actually going to have me try both. But you can't eat an hour before taking cobenfy or wait two hours after a meal. And of course with latuda you need to eat 350 calories with it. So I had to figure out a good time table to try it.

I'm nervous about vomiting or stomach issues like a lot of people have reported. They offered zofran for nausea and I think I'm going to take them up on that.