Metformin for Antipsychotic--Induced Weight Gain in Adults with Intellectual Disability
Description: Close to 50% of adults with intellectual disability (ID) are overweight or obese. One third of patients with ID are prescribed antipsychotic medications, which are known to cause significant weight gain, leading to obesity and other related diseases, like diabetes. Weight gain is associated with poorer quality of life, decreased social engagement, worse medication adherence, and poorer brain function. Unfortunately, current treatments for managing obesity, and other related risk factors for heart disease, are inadequately studied in individuals with ID. Research has shown that the drug metformin helps to reduce the weight gain associated with antipsychotic drugs, but this has not yet been tested in adults with ID. Our early findings show that metformin may be quite effective in reducing the weight gain associated with taking antipsychotic medication in adults with ID. We plan to study patients with ID who are overweight or obese and are taking antipsychotic medication to test metformin's ability to reduce body weight and improve heart health. Participants will be randomly assigned to take either metformin or a placebo for 6 months. Neither patients nor study personnel will know if placebo or metformin is being given. All participants will receive diet and lifestyle advice, and have their weight, blood pressure, and waist circumference measured at each visit. We believe that the patients taking metformin will lose a greater percentage of body weight than those who were given the placebo, leading to improvements in heart disease risk factors, physical health and quality of life.
Amount: CA$27,000
Funding type: fellowship
Funder scheme: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships
Start date: 2024-09-01
End date: 2025-08-31
Investigator: Tariq Ahmed
Institution: University of Toronto
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: 194703_1
OpenAlex ID: G5920937814