A Genetic Predictor of Antipsychotic-Associated Weight Gain in Children and Adults

Weight gain differs among patients taking atypical antipsychotics, which raises the possibility that genetic polymorphisms contribute to this phenotypic variation. To study the genetics, investigators used genome-wide analyses to examine DNA from four cohorts of participants. The discovery cohort consisted of 139 children receiving their first exposure to atypicals (JW Psychiatry Nov 9 2009), and the replication cohorts consisted of 205 adults. Treatment adherence was verified in most cohorts.

At 12 weeks, severe weight gain occurred significantly more frequently with olanzapine than with risperidone, aripiprazole, or quetiapine in the discovery cohort, and these last three drugs had similar weight distributions. Therefore, for reasons of ph…