Study explains why antipsychotic medications lead to weight gain, promote metabolic syndrome
Why do patients who receive antipsychotic medications to manage schizophrenia and bipolar disorder quickly gain weight and develop prediabetes and hyperinsulemia? The question remained a mystery for decades, but in a paper published today in
Translational Psychiatry, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine finally cracked the enigma.
Antipsychotic drugs, scientists showed, not only block dopamine signaling in the brain but also in the pancreas, leading to uncontrolled production of blood glucose-regulating hormones and, eventually, obesity and diabetes.
There are dopamine theories of schizophrenia, drug addiction, depression and neurodegenerative disorders, and we are presenting a dopamine theory of metabolism. We're seeing now that it is not only interesting to study dopamine in the brain, but it is equally interesting and important to study it in the periphery."