This drug takes the first new approach to schizophrenia treatment in decades," Farchione continued. "This approval offers a new alternative to the antipsychotic medications peo

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a new drug for adults with schizophrenia,  the FDA announced Thursday.

Available antipsychotic treatments work by blocking dopamine receptors. The new drug, Cobenfy, takes a different approach.

The first new kind of treatment for schizophrenia patients in decades is arriving. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug on Thursday, greenlighting the first of a new class of treatments that could help stabilize patients’ symptoms without the uncomfortable side effects that accompany existing antipsychotics.

The medication is the first in decades to have a different mode of action than do current drugs, achieving better symptom relief with fewer side effects.

Cobenfy was approved to reduce the psychotic symptoms associated with schizophrenia. It is a new type of medicine that works by stimulating a pair of muscarinic receptors in the brain, that, in turn, control the release of a brain chemical called acetylcholine.

The approval comes less than a year Bristol Myers Squibb paid $14 billion to acquire the developer of the drug, Karuna Therapeutics.