Schizophrenia and schizophrenia-related disorders now affect more than 1% of the population. There is excessive weight-gain, as high as 20- 25 lbs over the initial 24 weeks of treatment, associated with the use of the atypical anti-psychotics, such as olanzapine and clozapine. This is a major problem in psychiatric patient treatment since it not only impairs treatment due to reduced compliance, but also exposes patients to risk from metabolic disease. This is also a risk liability to the manufacturing pharma companies.

The direct cause of the weight gain in anti-psychotic drug treated patients is still not known. However, there is a direct correlation between the weight gain induced by the various agents and their ability to inhibit the histaminergic H1 receptor¹. This has been further validated in a molecular interactions study²

1. Wirshing et. al., Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (1999), 358-363.
2. Kim et. al., Proc Ad Nat Sci (2007) 3456-3459