Antipsychotic Drugs Associated with Heart Damage

Antipsychotic Drugs Linked to Heart Disease

May 22, 2001 (Ivanhoe Newswire)

Antipsychotic drugs may cause heart damage, say researchers from New Zealand and Sweden. Although they emphasize more studies are needed to determine the role that these drugs play in heart disease, researchers believe the findings send up a red flag regarding the drugs' safety.

Previous studies have shown the antipsychotic drug clozapine, which is used to treat severe schizophrenia, may be associated with myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, and cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart muscle. A recent analysis by the World Health Organization confirmed the findings. While adverse drug reactions involving myocarditis or cardiomyopathy were rare accounting for less than 0.1 percent of nearly 2.5 million reports, they were significantly associated with clozapine. An association between other antipsychotic drugs and heart damage was also found with drugs such as lithium, chlorpromazine, fluphenazine, haloperidol, and risperidone, although it was not as strong for these drugs as for clozapine.

Researchers suggest three explanations for the findings:

	The conditions for which antipsychotics are used could be risk factors for myocarditis and cardiomyopathy.
	The antipsychotic drug could be an innocent bystander in another disease process.
	There may be a causal association.

Until more studies can be completed, researchers say doctors prescribing these medications for their patients should consider the comparative risks and effectiveness of antipsychotics.

Opinions expressed in this web site do not necessarily reflect the views of NAMI Santa Cruz County, NAMI California or any affiliated organizations. We attempt to present a balanced perspective on issues by presenting multiple viewpoints.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (©) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of ecological, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.