Akathisia due to risperidone withdrawal: two clinical cases

Abstract

Akathisia due to withdrawal or disruption of antipsychotic treatment is a rare and scarcely elucidated presentation of extrapyramidalism which can also occur after other durg withdrawal. After having reviewed biomedical data basis IME and the latest seven years of MEDLINE and EMBASE, we only found one case, which was published in 1997, of persistent akathisia after risperidone withdrawal, but it had started under treatment with haloperidol. We next present the clinical observation of other two patients who developed akathisia after risperidone withdrawl. In one of them, akathisia started within the first days of treatment at hig-medium doses and got worse after withdrawal; in the other case, akathisia immediately started just after withdrawal of a nine-month treatment with risperidone at low doses.