Famotidine in Schizophrenia

Inclusion Criteria

• •ICD-10 diagnosis of schizophrenia (F20.00-20.39, F20.5, F20.9) who have had the disorder for at least 5 years and who are on disability pension. (This means that their treatment response is not satisfactory and for the purpose of this study, the subjects are potentially treatment resistant).
• •Clinical Global Impression (CGI) severity score of at least 3.
• •No changes in schizophrenia treatment within 12 weeks before study inclusion.
• •Written informed consent
• •The subjects must fulfil schizophrenia criteria both according to DSM- IV (295.10, .20, .30, .60, .90) (American Psychiatric association) and the Research Diagnostic Criteria for schizophrenia (RDC) \[40\]. They must also have at least mild residual symptoms (CGI 3 points). The DSM-IV diagnosis will be verified by use of the SCID-I \[41\]. The DSM-IV is clearly the most commonly used in psychiatric research, so this is important to be able to generalize the findings. However, several previous studies have used the RDC, so to be able to compare the results, we will diagnose the patients according to both systems.
• •Women of child-bearing age will be included only of they use adequate contraception, or if we can otherwise verify that the subject is not pregnant (s-HCG), the possibility of pregnancy is negligible (e.g. the personnel of the housing facility reports that the person has not had sexual relationships for years) and the subject approves to remain sexually abstinent for the duration of the study.