This drug should only be used if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk. For women who are breastfeeding: Quetiapine may pass into breast milk and may cause side effects in a child who is breastfed. Talk to your doctor if you breastfeed your child. You may need to decide whether to stop breastfeeding or stop taking this medication.
For seniors: The kidneys and livers of older adults may not work as well as they used to. This can cause your body to process drugs more slowly. As a result, a higher amount of a drug stays in your body for a longer time. This raises your risk of side effects. All possible dosages and drug forms may not be included here. Your dosage, drug form, and how often you take the drug will depend on:. Your doctor may start you on a lowered dosage or a different dosing schedule.
This can help keep levels of this drug from building up too much in your body. Your doctor may start you at a dosage of 50 mg daily. They may later increase it, adding 50 mg to your daily dose.
The dosage may be increased at a slower rate, and a lower total daily dose may be used to lessen the risk of side effects. It has not been confirmed that quetiapine is safe and effective to use for this purpose in children younger than 13 years. This medication has not been studied in children to use for this purpose. It should not be used in children younger than 18 years. Your doctor may start you on a lowered dose or a different dosing schedule.
The dosage will then need to be increased according to the dosage schedule from when you first started the medication. However, because drugs affect each person differently, we cannot guarantee that this list includes all possible dosages.
Always speak with your doctor or pharmacist about dosages that are right for you. Quetiapine oral tablet is used for long-term treatment. If you stop taking quetiapine suddenly, you may also have trouble sleeping or trouble staying asleep, or have nausea or vomiting.
For this drug to work well, a certain amount needs to be in your body at all times. If you take too much: You could have dangerous levels of the drug in your body. Symptoms of an overdose of this drug can include:. But if your symptoms are severe, call or go to the nearest emergency room right away.
What to do if you miss a dose: Take your dose as soon as you remember. But if you remember just a few hours before your next scheduled dose, take only one dose. Never try to catch up by taking two doses at once.
This could result in dangerous side effects. A prescription for this medication is refillable. You should not need a new prescription for this medication to be refilled.
Your doctor will write the number of refills authorized on your prescription. Quetiapine can make your body less able to manage your temperature. This can cause your temperature to increase too much, leading to a condition called hyperthermia.
Symptoms can include hot skin, excessive sweating, fast heartbeat, rapid breathing, and even seizures. To help prevent this, do the following during your treatment with this drug:. You and your doctor should monitor certain health issues. This can help make sure you stay safe while taking this drug.
These issues include:. You may need to have blood tests from time to time to check your blood sugar and cholesterol levels. Hepatic dysfunction. Seizure risk. Risk of aspiration pneumonia. Exposure to extreme heat. Urinary retention. Significant prostatic hypertrophy. Perform fall risk assessments when initiating and recurrently on long-term therapy. Do eye exam initially and every 6 months. History of breast cancer. Reevaluate periodically. It is also increasingly prescribed off-label for insomnia , usually at lower doses of mg or less a day.
But the evidence so far suggests the risks of prescribing quetiapine off-label outweigh any benefits. Since quetiapine came onto the market in , prescription rates have skyrocketed, especially in the United States, where it became the fifth-biggest-selling pharmaceutical in Prescriptions for quetiapine also increased significantly in Australia between and Patients switching from another antipsychotic to quetiapine cannot account for these changes; the rise is most likely due to off-label prescribing.
All antipsychotic drugs — both first generation, which were developed in the s, and second generation, developed since the s — exert their effect mainly by blocking dopamine transmission in various parts of the brain. They block dopamine D2 receptors, which alleviates symptoms of psychosis such as hallucinations, delusions and thought disorder.
Quetiapine is a second-generation antipsychotic drug that also blocks histamine H1 and serotonin type 2A receptors. Antipsychotic drugs, especially first-generation antipsychotics such as haloperidol, fluphenazine and trifluoperazine, can be associated with some serious side effects, such as the neurological disorder tardive dyskinesia. This involves involuntary movements of the face, tongue and mouth and, less commonly, the limbs, head, neck and trunk.
Read and follow the instructions carefully. Read it again each time you refill your prescription in case there is new information. Ask your doctor if you have any questions. Quetiapine tablets may be taken with or without food on a full or empty stomach. However, if your doctor tells you to take it a certain way, take it as directed. Swallow the extended-release tablets whole. Do not break, crush, or chew it. It is best to take this medicine without food or with a light meal approximately calories.
The dose of this medicine will be different for different patients. Follow your doctor's orders or the directions on the label. The following information includes only the average doses of this medicine.
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