Schizophrenia drug helps anorexia patients

The antipsychotic drug quetiapine may help ease symptoms in patients with anorexia nervosa, a small new study shows.

Nine of 19 anorexia patients in the study gained weight after 10 weeks on the drug, Dr. Pauline S. Powers and colleagues from the University of South Florida in Tampa report.

“Patients with anorexia have multiple symptoms including anxiety, depression, obsession and compulsions,” the researchers write. “Reduction in these symptoms might make weight gain easier.”

Patients with anorexia also have misperceptions of reality—for example, believing they are fat when they are emaciated—that are similar to the psychotic symptoms of people with schizophrenia, Powers and her team note in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

For this reason, newer schizophrenia drugs, known as atypical antipsychotics, are being tested in anorexia patients, and have shown positive effects in reducing symptoms, treating anxiety and depression, and helping patients gain weight.

Powers’s group tested the drug quetiapine in 19 patients with anorexia, 14 of whom completed the 10-week study. On average, the patients showed significant reductions in scores on three different scales used to measure the severity of eating disorders, while their symptoms of anxiety and depression also showed significant improvement.

Weight change during the study ranged from a loss of 5.5 pounds to a gain of 16 pounds, although the overall average gain was only 1.6 pounds. The average gain among the nine patients who did put on weight was 5.3 pounds.

Further analysis found that improvement in anorexia symptoms was significant among patients who gained weight, but not among those who did not.

The most common side effect seen in the study was temporary sleepiness and lethargy.

The next step, Powers and her team continue, will be to perform a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of quetiapine in anorexia patients.

SOURCE: International Journal of Eating Disorders, January 2006.

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