Psychiatric Drugs Cause Rapid Weight Gain in Kids

(NaturalNews) A new study has confirmed that atypical antipsychotic drugs can cause rapid weight gain in younger patients, as well as increasing levels of triglycerides and LDL ("bad") cholesterol in their blood.

"We are very much afraid that this will lead to diabetes and metabolic syndrome," researcher Christoph Correll said.

Antipsychotic drugs are intended primarily for people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but may also be prescribed to children with autism, aggression or tics. The so-called "second generation" or "atypical" antipsychotics have become more popular than older drugs in part because doctors believed them safer. Emerging research suggests this may not be the case, however, as in a 2008 study published in The Lancet.

In 2003, the FDA warned that use of the drugs could lead to elevated blood sugar and diabetes. Numerous studies have also linked the drugs to weight gain.

"We found that obesity/weight gain, Type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular conditions were more prevalent in the treated cohort," said Jeanette M. Jerrell, a professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, of a study she published in 2008. Jerell found that the risk was even higher among children taking more than one of the drugs.

But studies linking atypical antipsychotics and weight gain have been complicated by the fact that people regularly go on and off the drugs, making it hard to pinpoint a specific drug's contribution. The new study, conducted by researchers from the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y. and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, circumvented this problem by including only participants who were receiving treatment with psychotropics for the first time.

The study included 257 people between the ages of four and 19 who were being treated for severe problems with aripiprazole (marketed as Abilify), olanzapine (marketed as Zyprexa), quetiapine (marketed as Seroquel), or risperidone (marketed as Risperdal). They were compared with 15 people in the same age group who were suffering from similar problems but had declined drug-based treatment.

Although only Abilify and Risperdal are currently approved for use in children, all four drugs are used on juveniles in practice. An FDA panel recently recommended that Seroquel and Zyprexa also be approved for some uses in children.

The researchers found that in 11 weeks of treatment, patients taking Abilify gained an average of 9.7 pounds, patients on Risperdal gained 11.7 pounds, patients on Seroquel gained 13.4 pounds and patients on Zyprexa gained 18.7 pounds.

Depending on the drug, between 10 and 36 percent of participants became overweight or obese over the course of the study. Much of the weight gained was in the belly, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
"In these kids that we studied, there was rapid and dramatic weight gain, more than has been described before," Correll said.
Patients taking Seroquel, Risperdal and Zyprexa all showed increases in blood triglyceride levels as well, and Zyprexa also increased LDL cholesterol levels. These are also characteristics of metabolic syndrome, along with central obesity and elevated fasting blood sugar. Metabolic syndrome is a serious risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Scientists greeted the findings by saying that more data are needed to understand why the drugs cause weight gain and for how long, and why some people lose weight after going off the drugs and others do not.

"Some of these kids are maintained on these medications for many years if not indefinitely, so it's definitely a concern," said Ronald T. Brown of the Temple University Health Sciences Center in Philadelphia. "For children who really don't absolutely need these drugs, they need to be doing more behavioral approaches in psychotherapy."

Sources for this story include: www.usnews.com; www.nlm.nih.gov.

More evidence emerges that Americans are drugged out of their minds

(NaturalNews) As NaturalNews has previously reported, the U.S. is a nation seemingly hooked on mind-altering drugs (http://www.naturalnews.com/027054_d...). A study released last fall in the Archives of General Psychiatry documented a dramatic increase in the use of antidepressant drugs like Prozac since l996. In fact, these medications are now the most widely prescribed drugs in the U.S.

Think Americans are maxed out on the number of psychiatric meds that huge numbers of them are taking? Think again. A new report says U.S. adults are increasingly being prescribed combinations of antidepressants, anti-anxiety and antipsychotic medications -- and they could be experiencing serious side effects as a result.

The study, published in the January edition of Archives of General Psychiatry, investigated patterns and trends in what is known as psychotropic polypharmacy, meaning the prescribing of two or more psychiatric drugs. Ramin Mojtabai, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Mark Olfson, M.D., M.P.H., of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, examined data gathered from a national sample of office-based psychiatry practices. In all, the researchers looked at the medications prescribed between 1996 and 2006 during more than 13,000 office visits to psychiatrists by adults.

The results showed a significant increase in the number of mind impacting drugs prescribed over these years. The percentage of doctor visits which resulted in two or more medications being prescribed increased from 42.6 percent to 59.8 percent. What's more, the percentage of visits at which three or more drugs were prescribed soared from 16.9 percent to 33.2 percent. And the median number of medications prescribed at each appointment with a psychiatrist increased on average by of 40.1 percent.

The combinations of drugs being prescribed with increasing frequency include antidepressants with sedative-hypnotics (the most prescribed combination), antidepressants given along with antipsychotics and combinations of several kinds of antidepressants. But at least the doctors prescribing these mixed drugs are only doing so based on solid research showing the combos are safe and effective, right? Wrong.

"Because scant data exist to support the efficacy of some of the most common medication combinations, such as antipsychotic combinations or combinations of antidepressants and antipsychotics, prudence suggests that renewed clinical efforts should be made to limit the use of these combinations to clearly justifiable circumstances," the authors wrote in their paper. "At the same time, a new generation of research is needed to assess the efficacy, effectiveness and safety of common concomitant medication regimens, especially in patients with multiple disorders or monotherapy-refractory conditions."

In other words, drugs are being given to patients in all sorts of combinations without sound science showing they even work well together -- much less that these drug cocktails are safe to take. In fact, the researchers point out specific dangers of taking multiple psychiatric drugs.

"While the evidence for added benefit of antipsychotic polypharmacy is limited, there is growing evidence regarding the increased adverse effects associated with such combinations," they concluded. A case in point: some combinations cause increases in body weight and total cholesterol level. Others have been associated with an increase in fasting blood glucose level.

For more information:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...