Therapeutic drug monitoring of second-generation antipsychotics for the estimation of early drug effect in first-episode psychosis: a cross-sectional assessment.

Studies on therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) have provided conflicting results regarding the association between dose, plasma concentrations, and drug effect and have focused rather on analyzing how individual drugs work. No study has attempted to process data from different SGAs globally to offer a panoramic view of the utility of TDM in clinical practice, and data on patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP) are lacking. The present study aimed to assess the relationship between dose, plasma concentrations, and drug effect in a sample of FEP patients, regardless of the SGA prescribed.