Introduction Major smoking effects have been reported for a series of
psychotropic agents, mainly including substrates of CYP450 1A2, although smoking
may also affect alternative metabolic pathways. To our knowledge, smoking
effects on paliperidone pharmacokinetics have not been assessed yet.
Methods We compared plasma concentrations of paliperidone as well as
dose-corrected-plasma concentrations (C/D) from a naturalistic database
between smokers and nonsmokers using nonparametrical tests, such as the
Mann-Whitney U-test (MWU). Additionally, we compared light and heavy smokers
with nonsmokers separately.
Results Comparing 55 smokers with 37 nonsmokers treated with oral
paliperidone, no differences in the percentage of females, age, body weight,
body mass index, and daily paliperidone dose were reported (p=0.709 for
χ2, p=0.26, p=0.38, p=0.67, and
p=0.8 for MWU). No differences were detected in plasma concentrations or
C/D values (p=0.50 and p=0.96 for MWU). Likewise,
differences in daily dose, plasma concentrations, or C/D values were not
significant between light smokers (n=17) and nonsmokers (p=0.61,
p=0.81, and p=0.33 for MWU) or heavy smokers (n=22) and
nonsmokers (p=0.874, p=0.38, and p=0.59; MWU in all
cases).
Discussion Paliperidone is not affected by smoking, and paliperidone
dose-adjustments in smokers may not be necessary. This may be seen as an
essential difference to risperidone, whose cytochrome-mediated metabolism might
be affected by smoking.