Reversibility of Antipsychotic Treatment–Related Diabetes in Patients With Schizophrenia

At present, antipsychotic drugs are not specifically referred to in the list of substances that can induce diabetes in the most recent American Diabetes Association guidelines (1), but there is a growing body of evidence that antipsychotic drugs might have diabetogenic properties (2,3). At present, there are no clear guidelines on what the best therapeutic strategies are when diabetes is detected during treatment with antipsychotics. Data from pharmacovigilance studies suggest that a significant proportion of recent-onset cases of diabetes can be reversed. Recent Belgian guidelines for screening and monitoring patients treated with antipsychotics propose a switch to an antipsychotic with a safer metabolic profile, but this …