Disruptive behaviour's treatment with paliperidone in autistic disorder: Review and case report

Abstract

Introduction

Autistic disorder (AD) is a neuropsychiatric disorder that often presents significant disruptive symptoms such as irritability, aggression and self-injury in addition to impairment of social skills and communication. These symptoms interfere both individuals with AD and their families and social environment.

Objective

Show paliperidone effect in behavioural symptoms in AD.

Methods

Literature review about behavioural symptoms in AD and paliperidone effect in its treatment, followed by a case report of clinical improvement after treatment with paliperidone in a patient with autism. Agitation subscale Aberrant Behavior Checklist (ABC-I) scores was compared prior and 4 weeks after paliperidone treatment, and clinical improvement was assessed with Clinical Global Impression-Improvement Scale (CGI-I).

Results

Although risperidone has been one of the most studied atypical antipsychotic to treat this symptoms, its use should be limited in order to avoid extrapyramidal and metabolic symptoms. Paliperidone – the major metabolite of risperidone – has shown effectiveness in the treatment of behavioral symptoms in patients with autism, even in subjects with a prior ineffective trial of risperidone. Our patient, 21-years-old male with AD and significant disruptive symptoms was treated with paliperidone 9 mg/day. We observed a 20-points reduction in ABC-I scores 4 weeks later, with most significant improvement in items like auto-agression, heteroaggressivity, irritability and slams. CGI-I scores showed a much better improvement, and no significant adverse effects appeared.

Conclusions

Paliperidone is an effective and safe treatment in behavioral symptoms associated to AD, with reduction in ABC-I subscale scores. More studies are needed to confirm our data.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.