www.ClinicalMind.com

Which drugs cause weight gain?

  It may be virtually impossible to list all the drugs which cause weight gain, there's simply too many of them.  Since many drugs can be grouped into categories according to their mechanism of action, it may be useful to simply say which groups of drugs cause weight gain. 

   For instance, atypical antipsychotic drugs, also known as the new generation antipsychotics, have a great therapeutic effect, generally do not cause the dreaded extrapyramidal side effects common to older antipsychotics, but they do cause weight gain quite often.  Examples of drugs are Aripiprazole (Abilify), clozapine (Clozaril) or olanzapine (Zypreza). 

   Antidepressants may cause weight gain, this includes selective serotonin receptor inhibitors (SSRIs), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO inhibitors) and tricyclic antidepressants.

   Lithium, drug probably most commonly used for treatment of Bipolar disorder, is notorious for causing weight gain of 10, 20 pounds or more.

   This is just a sample of the vast numbers of drugs that cause weight gain.  I will be covering those in greater detail, shortly.