What type of antidepressant makes you less fat?

Spain is the third country in the European Union with the highest consumption of antidepressants, with around 10% of the population taking them, the figure is not small, and it increases from year to year. weight gain is a side effect of this group of drugs, but there is no clear reason why it affects some people and not others. Also, not all subtypes affect weight in the same way.

Now, researchers at Harvard Medical School have shed light on some of the unknowns in this regard by examining electronic health records. more than 183,000 adults aged 18 to 80 who began treatment with one of eight first-line antidepressants to assess drug-induced weight changes at 6, 12, and 24 months after participants began taking it. Of the drugs studied, the most commonly prescribed were: sertraline, citalopram, bupropion, escitalopram, fluoxetine, venlafaxine, paroxetine and duloxetine.

Investigation, published in Annals of Internal Medicine definite that bupropion users are 15–20% less likely to gain clinically significant weight than sertraline users. – a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), the most commonly prescribed drug in the world.

The results also showed that a large percentage of patients were taking medications that caused more weight gain than commonly available alternatives in the same class or subclass. “While there are several reasons why patients and their doctors might prefer one antidepressant over another, weight gain is the primary side effect that often leads patients to stop taking their medications,” says lead author Jason Block, a primary care physician and associate professor of community medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Pilgrim Health Institute, according to the EP.

The range of options available to professionals and patients when choosing antidepressant treatment makes it possible to take this variable into account, given that obesity is a risk factor for many other diseases. So the researchers suggest “using this information, along with other factors, to help decide which option is right for them.”

As published on the SMC portal by Amelia Martí, professor of human physiology at the University of Navarra, “these results are in line with previous work by our group, published in 2019, in which we carried out a systematic review aimed at assessing possible The cohort studies included 27 independent cohort studies involving children (2-18 years) and adults (18-103 years). 5% weight gain in people taking antidepressants. However, quetiapine, haloperidol, trifluoperazine, risperidone, aripiprazole, olanzapine, and clozapine are all neuroleptics– increase in body weight by more than 7% relative to the baseline value that is considered a clinically significant result. Interestingly, “Weight loss was found in individuals taking bupropion”