Antipsychotic Medication and Diabetes Mellitusrs

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Sir: Spoelstra and colleagues¹ assert that antipsychotic drugs may worsen metabolic control in type 2 diabetes mellitus and speculate from their pharmacoepidemiologic study that this worsening is probably due to β-cell toxicity. While there is general agreement that exposure to antipsychotic medications (and second-generation agents in particular) may be associated with an increased risk of diabetes mellitus,² there are several problems regarding the authors’ interpretation of the data. First, a comparison group of those not taking antipsychotics is probably not comparable to a group taking these medications.