In the first post on several articles on obesity and mental illness published in the January issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, I would like discuss the paper by Constadina Panagiotopoulos and colleagues form the University of British Columbia, that looks at the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its components in children and youth treated with second-generation antipsychotics (SGA).
The study sample consisted of 117 SGA-treated and 217 SGA-naive children prospectively recruited from the Psychiatry Emergency Unit at British Columbia Children’s Hospital.
MetS was present in 19% of SGA-treated kids (including 2 cases of newly discovered type 2 diabetes) compared to less than 1% of SGA-naive kids showing an almost 30-fold increased risk of MetS in the former.
Among all of the various predictors studies, being treated with SGA and being male were the two major predictors.
Furthermore, the authors note that measurement of waist circumference as a measure of abdominal adiposity was more sensitive (92.9%) than BMI (68.8%) in detecting MetS, while fasting glucose of 5.6 mmol/L or more and HDL-C of 1.03mmol/L or less were most specific (94.1%).
It is perhaps also of interest that overall prevalence of overweight and obesity, although higher in the SGA treated kids, was almost twice as high in the general paediatric populations reported in British Columbia. This suggests that having a mental health condition alone already puts these kids at increased risk for obesity, a risk that is further drastically compounded by the use of SGA.
The authors conclude that standardized metabolic testing may be indicated in children treated with SGA and efforts to mitigate this risk should be started early in treatment.
While these ’side-effects’ are concerning and it may well be that increased risk of MetS may put these kids at long-term risk for cardiovascular problems, there are often poor alternatives for these children, who require such medications.
On the other hand, as I will discuss in tomorrow’s post, there is considerable ‘off-label’ use of antipsychotic and other psychiatric medications in kids, a practice that may require careful scrutiny given these findings.
AMS
Edmonton, Alberta
In The News
January 30th, 2012 at 10:01 am
Does anyone ever think to ask if there might be a non-prescription alternative to these drugs? Or is that question never asked because the medical community is only interested in “science”? In the next study, I’d like to see various interventions as well as a control group. How about trying yoga, tai chi, meditation instead of drugs? How about good psychiatric/pschological care for another group? Admittedly I am a layperson. And I feel like we are not asking any of the right questions in medical research. Tell me why the kind of research I am suggesting is a non-starter?
January 31st, 2012 at 4:03 pm
Linda,
How many “thumbs up” can I give you?