The Frontier Psychiatrists

The Frontier Psychiatrists

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The Frontier Psychiatrists
The Frontier Psychiatrists
Are High-Dose Antipsychotics More Deadly Than Fentanyl in Kids?

Are High-Dose Antipsychotics More Deadly Than Fentanyl in Kids?

And other questions I'd rather not be asking.

Owen Scott Muir, M.D, DFAACAP's avatar
Owen Scott Muir, M.D, DFAACAP
Jan 15, 2024
∙ Paid
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The Frontier Psychiatrists
The Frontier Psychiatrists
Are High-Dose Antipsychotics More Deadly Than Fentanyl in Kids?
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The Frontier Psychiatrists is a daily health-themed newsletter. Today, it is about serious and avoidable risks to the health of the most vulnerable people. Antipsychotic medications, again, are under the microscope.

Antipsychotic medication can be profoundly helpful. It is also risky. New large-scale data highlights those risks. First, colleagues, including my first research mentor Christoph Correll, do a large-scale assessment of metabolic syndrome in depression…and find a risk of metabolic syndrome and other adverse metabolic outcomes. This is almost entirely attributable to antipsychotic medicines:

[authors included] 18 studies with interview-defined depression1. The overall proportion with MetS [Metabolic Syndrome] was 30.5% … using any standardized MetS criteria. Compared with…matched control groups, individuals with MDD had a higher Metabolic Syndrome prevalence [odds ratio (OR) 1.54, … p = 0.001]. They also had a higher risk for hyperglycemia (OR 1.33…p = 0.03) and hypertr…

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