A large, observational, multinational cross-sectional pharmacoepidemiological study was performed to determine the prevalence of diabetes and other metabolic disorders in patients with schizophrenia receiving atypical antipsychotic drugs in Europe.

The study included adult outpatients with schizophrenia (DSM-IV-TR) treated for at least three months by an antipsychotic drug. Patients treated with classical or atypical antipsychotic drugs were recruited into two parallel strata (ratio of 1:3). A fasting blood sample was taken and height, weight, waist and hip circumference and blood pressure measured during a single visit. Biochemical parameters assessed included glucose, insulin, HbA1c, triglycerides, total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and apolipoprotein B.

2463 patients (median age: 41.0 years; 54.6% male) were included in twelve countries. among these, 10.9% of patients were treated for hypertension, 7.1% for a lipid disorder, 0.3% for type I diabetes and 3.5% for type II diabetes. in addition, 26% of untreated patients had dysglycaemia, 67.7% dyslipidemia and 38% had hypertension. 34% of the patients presented a metabolic syndrome. No overall difference was observed in the proportion of patients with glycaemic and lipid disorders between the two treatment strata. Values for weight-related variables were slightly higher in the atypical stratum, whereas hypertension was more frequent in the classical stratum (47.3%) than in the atypical stratum (42.2%).

The results of this study emphasise the need for careful follow-up of patients with schizophrenia treated with antipsychotic drugs to detect the occurrence of metabolic disorders. the proportion of patients with glycaemic or lipid disorders was very high and largely underdiagnosed.

This study was funded by sanofi-aventis.