Is Antipsychotic Drug-Induced Weight Gain Associated With a Favorable Clinical Response?

Letter to the Editor

Sir: I am writing to comment on Dr. Ganguli’s recent article on weight gain associated with antipsychotic drugs. The article stated that reports by Leadbetter et al. and Lamberti et al. differed as to whether clozapine-induced weight gain correlated with clinical improvement among patients with schizophrenia. As a point of clarification, our findings were consistent with those of Leadbetter et al. We found a trend for Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale score changes to correlate inversely with amount of weight gained such that lower (improved) scores were associated with larger gains. Most recently, this issue was examined in a large group of patients with schizophrenia or related disorders receiving treatment with olanzapine, risperidone, or haloperidol. Analyzing data from a total of 2266 patients, weight gain was found to be associated with a favorable clinical response for each of the 3 drugs.