Search Here

Taking antipsychotic drugs shrinks the brain, according to a new study.

Scientists found that schizophrenia patients taking antipsychotic drugs experienced measurable decreases in brain volume.

After comparing brain scans of 33 patients with schizophrenia with 71 healthy control participants over a period of 9 years, researchers found that schizophrenia patients lost brain volume at a rate of 0.7 percent each year, whereas healthy participants lost brain volume at a rate of 0.5 percent per year.

Researchers explain that the shrinking of brain volume is a naturally occurring phenomenon called atrophy, a process that generally starts at the age of 30. While previous studies have shown that schizophrenic patients lose brain volume at a faster rate than healthy individuals, the reason behind the phenomenon has been unclear.

However, the latest study reveals that antipsychotic medication is partly responsible for faster brain atrophy rates in schizophrenia patients. The latest findings reveal that the rate of decrease in volume was greater when the dose of medication was higher.

"We all lose some brain tissue as we get older, but people with schizophrenia lose it at a faster rate. We've shown that this loss seems to be linked to the antipsychotic medication people are taking. Research like this where patients are studied for many years can help to develop guidelines about when clinicians can reduce the dosage of antipsychotic medication in the long term treatment of people with schizophrenia," researcher Professor Juha Veijola from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oulu in Finland said in a news release.

"It's important to stress that the loss of brain volume doesn't appear to have any effect on people over the nine year follow-up we conducted, and patients should not stop their medication on the basis of this research, " added Dr. Graham Murray from the Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience Institute and the Department of Psychiatry at University of Cambridge, according to a statement. "A key question in future will be to examine whether there is any effect of this loss of brain volume later in life. We need more research in larger studies with longer follow-ups to evaluate the significance of these brain changes."

The findings are published in the journal PLOS ONE.