Early improvement in PANSS-30, PANSS-8, and PANSS-6 scores predicts ultimate response and remission during acute treatment of schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE

PANSS-8 and PANSS-6 are derived from the 30-item Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS-30). We investigate whether PANSS-8 or PANSS-6 is a reliable, valid, sensitive to change measure, and scalable, and whether early improvement using them can predict response/remission.

METHOD

Data were from 3 trials for 270 schizophrenia inpatients receiving antipsychotics. Internal consistency, validity, sensitivity to change, and scalability using PANSS-30, PANSS-8, and PANSS-6 at each assessment were examined. Early improvement was defined as at least 20% reduction of PANSS-30, PANSS-8, or PANSS-6 scores at week 2. Response was defined as at least 40% reduction of PANSS-30 and remission as a score of PANSS-8 ≤ 3 on each item at endpoint. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to determine which rating scale had better discriminative capacity.

RESULTS

PANSS-8 and PANSS-6 showed acceptable internal consistency, were highly correlated with PANSS-30, and had sensitivity to change. PANSS-8 and PANSS-6 were scalable at each assessment, except for PANSS-6 at baseline. Early improvement using PANSS-8 or PANSS-6 had comparable predictive values with that of PANSS-30 for response/remission.

CONCLUSION

PANSS-8 and PANSS-6 are clinically useful measures. Early improvement, regardless of whether PANSS-30, PANSS-8, or PANSS-6 is used, is a statistically significant predictor of response/remission.