Scientists Find cause of Antipsychotic-induced Weight Gain

Molecular mechanism behind weight gain due to antipsychotic medication has been published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. "If this effect can be shown in clinical trials, it could give us a way to effectively treat patients for their neuropsychiatric conditions without this serious side effect," says lead author Chen Liu, Ph.D., assistant professor of internal medicine and neuroscience, and with UTSW's O'Donnell Brain Institute and Hypothalamic Research Center.

Around 1 in five people who take risperidone, add more than 7 percent to their baseline weight within a few weeks of treatment, contributing to high blood cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. The weight gain leads many patients to stop using the medication.

Researchers developed a diet for mice that incorporates the drug and identified changes in gene expression and neuronal activity within the animals' hypothalamus. They quickly honed in on a gene called melanocortin 4 (Mc4r), which also is linked to obesity in humans.

The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a drug that promotes Mc4r activity to treat some genetic forms of obesity, and Liu and his team showed that giving mice this drug along with risperidone prevented weight gain while maintaining effective treatment in models of schizophrenia - offering hope that this strategy might be effective for human patients as well.



Source-Medindia