Estrogen for schizophrenia

Adjunctive estrogen with or without progesterone does not appear to offer advantages over placebo for the treatment of schizophrenia.

A Cochrane review included four studies, with a total of 108 women, comparing estrogen only with placebo. Short-term scores for general mental state showed no significant difference between groups (n=24, 1 RCT, WMD PANSS for 100 mcg comparison –2.26, CI –15.4 to 10.9). Data from all four studies showed overall loss from the studies was low (~5%), with no significant differences between groups (n=96, 4 RCTs, RR 0.95, CI 0.2 to 6.1). One medium-term unpublished study (n=14) compared estrogen and progesterone with placebo. Data at six months showed no difference between groups for total scores (n=9, WMD PANSS –25.3, CI –51 to 0.1). For negative symptoms, results favoured the estrogen and progesterone group (n=9, WMD PANSS negative subscale –9.0, CI –17 to –0.9).

Comment: The quality of evidence is downgraded by imprecise data (limited study size for each comparison).

Ədəbiyyat

1. Chua WL, de Izquierdo SA, Kulkarni J, Mortimer A. Estrogen for schizophrenia. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2005 Oct 19;(4):CD004719.