LAUSR

A recent 6-week, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial on lurasidone for acute schizophrenia in Japan 1 demonstrated that lurasidone (LUR) 40 mg/day (LUR40) improved Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) 2 total score (PANSS-T) while being well-tolerated. How-ever, two other Japanese trials showed that both LUR40 and lurasidone 80 mg/day (LUR80) were not superior to placebo in terms of improving PANSS-T. 3,4 Our network meta-analysis, which included these Japan trials, found that LUR40 had a greater effect size on PANSS-T than LUR80 when compared with placebo. 5 Another meta-analysis that had included the aforementioned trials, as well as various races and ethnicities, showed that the effect size on the ef fi cacy of LUR became larger in a dose-dependent manner. 6 interested determining the duration for which LUR should be examined for Japanese schizophrenia before being considered ineffective and switched. meta-analysis involving various races and eth-nicities by Samara al. 7 reported that the absence of improvement within 2 weeks of treatment might predict the unlikely success of subsequent antipsychotic treatment. However, while the maximum dose for adults with schizophrenia in Japan is LUR80, some other countries, including the United States, use a maximum LUR dose of 160 mg. 8 the results LUR studies Japan and those countries, mentioned earlier, believe that the results of Samara and colleagues ’ applicable to LUR treatment for Japanese schizophrenia. Additionally, there is a need to resolve clinical dilemma regarding which dose, LUR40 or LUR80, was more in line with the early-onset hypothesis of antipsychotic action. In this study, we performed a pooled, post hoc analysis using