A Brand New Kind of Schizophrenia Treatment

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For the past 70 years, schizophrenia treatments all targeted the same chemical: dopamine. While that works for some, it causes brutal side effects for others. An antipsychotic drug approved last month by the FDA changes that. It triggers muscarinic receptors instead of dopamine receptors. The drug is the result of a chance scientific finding ... from a study that wasn't even focused on schizophrenia. Host Emily Kwong and NPR pharmaceutical correspondent Sydney Lupkin dive into where the drug originated, how it works and what it might shift for people with schizophrenia.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from Indiana University.
0:02.6	Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year,
0:06.4	making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change,
0:10.2	and move society forward.
0:12.1	More at IU.D.U. slash forward.
0:16.0	You're listening to Shortwave
0:18.0	from NPR
0:21.0	Hey Shortwaivers, Emily Kwong here with NPR's pharmaceutical correspondent,
0:26.0	Sidney Lufkin.
0:27.0	Hey.
0:28.0	And Sidney, your job means you report on a lot of different drugs and medicines, right?
0:31.0	Right, I talked to a lot of experts.
0:33.6	For this story, however, the most important person that I spoke to was just a regular person
0:38.0	who told me about her experience with a certain kind of medication.
0:41.9	Tiffany is a librarian in Oklahoma.
0:44.3	She has a master's degree, a husband, four cats, a dog,
0:48.5	a hamster, and a shrimp in an aquarium.
0:51.2	She also has schizophrenia, a mental illness in which people have delusions,
0:55.1	hallucinations, and other symptoms.
0:57.7	No medication has ever touched my delusions.
1:01.6	Those are my main symptom and they are with me from the beginning to the end. They're all the time.
1:09.0	She's had delusions of thinking she's not human, thinking cameras are always watching her, stuff like that.
	...

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