Antipsychotic Drug Weight Gain Studied

U.S. scientists say they have determined why some drugs used to treat mental illnesses cause patients to gain life-threatening amounts of weight.

We’ve now connected a whole class of antipsychotics to natural brain chemicals that trigger appetite, said Dr. Solomon Snyder, professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Our identification of the molecular players that link such drugs to increased food intake means there’s now hope for finding a newer generation of drugs without the weight-gain side effects.

Other researchers included Sangwon Kim, the study’s lead author; Alex Huang and Adele Snowman; and Cory Teuscher of the University of Vermont College of Medicine.

The research will be published online next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.