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Patients with severe psychiatric illnesses have higher rates of medical illnesses and lower life expectancies than the general population. To examine the influence of antipsychotic medications, researchers used Finnish national registry data.
Two cohorts were studied: A prevalent cohort involved 62,250 patients with schizophrenia who received inpatient medical care between 1972 and 2014 (50% men; mean baseline age, 46). Common baseline comorbidities were alcohol or substance use disorder (4%), cardiovascular disease (5%), and diabetes (5%). During a mean follow-up of 14 years, 22% died and 68% had medical hospitalizations. The nested incident cohort involved 8719 patients diagnosed with first-episode psychosis from 1996 to 2014 who had not t…