Correlations between weight changes and lipid profile changes in schizophrenic patients after antipsychotics therapy.

BACKGROUND In our previous study, we had identified strong associations between dyslipidemia and acute-phase schizophrenia during the 3-week study period. In this study, we further investigated the correlations between weight changes and lipid changes during this short period in Taiwan. METHODS During a 1-year period, the data of age, body mass index, antipsychotic drugs and fasting blood samples for serum lipid profiles were collected at baseline and endpoint of 3 weeks. The antipsychotic drugs used include haloperidol, loxapine, sulpiride, olanzapine, risperidone, and clozapine. RESULTS A total of 97 schizophrenia patients were enrolled in this study. The authors found that most antipsychotic drugs showed increased weight changes in Taiwanese patients. Using linear regression, the authors also found that the weight changes in patients taking clozapine had significantly negative correlation with HDL changes during the 3-week study period. However, no significant correlations between weight changes and lipid changes were noted in patients using other antipsychotic drugs. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study showed that most antipsychotic drugs showed increased weight changes and schizophrenia patients using clozapine might have negative correlations between weight changes and HDL changes during a very short period. However, due to the limitation of the sample size, larger samples are needed to prove the results after controlling confounding factors.