Schizophrenia And Weight Gain: The Baseline Data

Metabolic disorders, weight gain and diabetes have a common cause now; as per several researches conducted, it's the usage of the new generation anti-psychotics for treating schizophrenia that binds them all together.

Those who are unaware of the existence of American Psychiatric Association, for them, it is a worldwide known society for medical specialty and has more than 38,000 physicians as members (both U.S. and international), with the primary goal of providing effective treatment with humane care for all with psychological disorders, including subnormal disorders and substance abuse complications. The organization has for long been monitoring such problems, taking into account the victims' personal as well as family health details besides usual BMI, blood pressure and fasting blood lipid and glucose levels. In the words of Dr. Peter F. Buckley (Lead investigator; Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior): "What we have found is that metabolic problems often associated with these drugs are a substantial concern and that clinicians are slowly beginning to change their practice to reflect that concern." So what did they find, after all?

The findings related certain anti-psychotics (e.g. Clozapine, Risperidone etc.) discovered over the past couple of decades showed an improved ability to ward off several types of hallucinations and delusions that remain associated with schizophrenia. But the news that shook the world of psychiatry is they leave the motor neurons intact and thus do not damage muscle control unlike older anti-psychotics. The days of corrupt physicians who terrorized people by associating Parkinson's disease with schizophrenia are over. So Dr. Buckley spoke once more: "These newer drugs are definitely more effective (but) they are just not without their own side effects. Some of those side effects fit unfortunately well with what's happening in the world and America with rampant problems with obesity and type 2 diabetes."

However, the medical world doesn't value the words of mouth; what they need is proof. Thus, American Diabetes Association and the American Association for Clinical Endocrinologists joined hands with APA to evaluate and monitor the harmful metabolic effects of the medicines. The thing that got the other two organizations interested is the new school of drugs could get rid of the noncompliance problem in schizophrenics, a side effect often brought over by the older formulations.

Further experiments proved the new class of drugs is effective in silencing the hallucination-causing over-communications in the brain. The secret is the dampening action they have on dopamine (a monoamine neurotransmitter found in the brain and essential for the normal functioning of the central nervous system), but also alters the brain chemistry and overall metabolism. As a result, people feel a lot hungrier, which is also a big problem for overweight schizophrenics.

The only answer to this (and similar) side effect - as it seems now - is genetics. Or, as Dr. Buckley had put it: "In this study, we discovered that a patient's genetic make-up of their serotonin receptors can predict whether a patient will gain weight or not during treatments with such drugs."