Conditions: Schizophrenia Schizoaffective Disorder Schizophreniform Disorders
Keywords: schizophrenia metabolism antipsychotics diabetes rozerem
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 25
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
This study involves people who have schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder who are currently taking antipsychotic medications. Some antipsychotic medications may cause weight gain and may increase the risk of diabetes mellitus and heart disease.The purpose of this study is to find out what happens if another medication (ramelteon) is used along with your antipsychotic medication. We want to find out whether doing this will:

* Change the way your body breaks down fat and sugar.
* Affect your waist size, stomach fat and triglycerides (a type of fat in your blood).
* Improve how your body responds to insulin.
* Affect your quality of sleep.
* Reduce movement disturbances Ramelteon is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat people that have difficulty falling asleep. It is not approved for such things as affecting waist size or improving how the body breaks down fat and sugar. Its use in this study is investigational.

Detailed description:
This is an 8-week randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled pilot study with 4- week follow up assessment, of ramelteon 8 mg/day, administered to subjects for 8 consecutive weeks as an adjunctive therapy in 40 non-diabetic schizophrenia subjects to examine ramelteon effects on body composition, glucose and lipid metabolism, sleep quality and symptoms of tardive dyskinesia using the Massachusetts General Hospital General Clinical Research Center. As far as we know, no previous study has been done to explore the potential role of ramelteon in improving metabolic, sleep, and movement disturbances in schizophrenia subjects. The novel approach of adjunctive ramelteon treatment in the schizophrenia population is promising.

Arms:
arm 1: Ramelteon 8mg/day arm 2: sugar pill

Interventions: intervention 1: Ramelteon intervention 2: Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Two week supply of ramelteon 8mg/day first dispensed at baseline. New two week supply of study medication dispensed at each biweekly visit for 8 consecutive weeks. intervention 2: Two week supply of placebo tablets first dispensed at baseline. New two week supply of placebo dispensed at each biweekly visit for 8 consecutive weeks.

Protocol document: