Binge eating may contribute to weight gain in schizophrenia patients

Researchers have found binge eating symptomatology to be common among overweight patients with schizophrenia, which may contribute to the initiation and maintenance of antipsychotic-induced weight gain.Binge eating disorder (BED) is a DSM-IV provisional research criteria eating disorder characterised by recurrent episodes of binge eating in the absence of extreme weight control measures occurring at least twice weekly over a 6-month period. People with BED have a tendency for high emotional distress and poor body image, and previous research has found a high prevalence of BED among psychotic patients. Approximately half of the patients who take antipsychotic medication experience weight gain. Khazaal et al. sought to assess binge eating symptomatology in patients receiving treatment for schizophrenia.They compared 40 outpatients diagnosed with DSM-IV schizophrenia (19 females, mean age 33.8 years) with 40 non-psychiatric controls (21 females, mean age 35.5 years). Both groups comprised two groups: a severely overweight subgroup (body mass index [BMI] >28 kg/m²) and an average weight subgroup (BMI Their analysis revealed that more patients with schizophrenia treated with antipsychotic medications demonstrated binge eating symptomatology (BS or BED) than controls (17 versus 10). Furthermore, among subjects who were severely overweight, 60% with schizophrenia demonstrated binge eating symptomatology compared with only 30% of controls.The authors claimed that the results suggest that where weight gain is induced by antipsychotic drugs, patients with schizophrenia are more likely to develop BED or BS. "This phenomenon may be due to a higher level of emotional vulnerability, a predisposing factor to both severe overweight, BED and BS," they stated."Binge eating symptomatology may play an important role in the initiation and maintenance of the weight gain phenomenon observed in at least part of patients with schizophrenia," they concluded.Reference...