Nowadays the mainstay of treatment is drug
therapy. Chlorpromazine, haloperidol and other
‘first generation’ drugs are gradually being
superseded by ‘second generation’ or ‘atypical’
antipsychotics that generally have fewer
unpleasant side-effects than the older drugs.
The most effective of these second generation
drugs is clozapine. There are a number of reports
that demonstrate relationships between plasma
antipsychotic concentrations and in vivo binding
to receptors in different regions of the brain.
However, only in the case of plasma clozapine is
there evidence that there is a generallyapplicable
‘target range’ associated with
successful therapy making it an ideal candidate
for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM)
(Flanagan, 2006; Hiemke, 2008).
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