CHICAGO — Children on widely used psychiatric drugs can quickly gain an alarming amount of weight, a study has found.
“Sometimes, this stuff just happens like an explosion. You can actually see them grow between appointments,” said Dr. Christopher Varley, a psychiatrist with Seattle Children’s Hospital, who called the study “sobering.”
Weight gain is a known possible side effect of the anti-psychotic drugs prescribed for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia but also increasingly for autism, attention-deficit disorders and other behavior problems. The new study in mostly older children and teens suggests they may be more vulnerable to weight gain than adults. The study, in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association, also linked some of these drugs with worrisome increases in blood fats, including cholesterol.
Researchers tie these changes to weight gain and worry that both may make children more prone to heart problems in adulthood.
The research is the largest in children who just started taking the drugs and provides strong evidence that they caused the side effects, said lead author Dr. Christoph Correll of North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in New York. The Associated Press
