Dose‐related clozapine‐induced weight gain

Abstract

Weight gain is a known adverse drug reaction associated with the use of antipsychotic medications, potentially leading to obesity and/or other long‐term metabolic complications such as type II diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Reported risk factors associated with antipsychotic‐induced weight gain include young age, female sex, and low baseline body mass index (Correll et al., 2017). Among the approaches used to reverse or reduce weight gain associated with antipsychotics are non‐pharmacological interventions around diet and exercise and pharmacological strategies involving either switching to a different antipsychotic, adding metformin or other weight‐lowering drugs, or reducing the dose of the current antipsychotic.