Loading...
Prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs to young patients for a variety of indications — both FDA-approved and off-label — continue to rise. To elucidate some of the risks involved in prescribing these drugs, researchers performed a meta-analysis of 13 retrospective or prospective studies of youth (N=185,105; mean age, 14) and psychiatric or healthy controls (N=1,342,121 and 298,803, respectively).
During a mean follow-up of 1.7 years, patients exposed to antipsychotics for at least 3 months had significantly higher cumulative risk and incidence of type 2 diabetes than both healthy controls (2.6 and 3.0 times higher, respectively) and nonexposed psychiatric patients (2.1 and 1.8 times higher, respectively). The risk and incidence of type 2 diab…