The medical world is forever focusing on developing new treatments, medications and searching for causes and cures.

 

One of the most recent studies developed in the United States have centered on the effects of several dugs commonly known as atypical antipsychotics. These drugs are usually prescribed for a wide panel of conditions, among which schizophrenia, autism and dementia.

 

The extensive study has revealed worrisome new data, which has led researchers to the conclusion that these atypical antypsichotics have the effect of doubling a patient’s risk of dying from sudden heart failure.

 

This study is just one of the few that have so far contradicted the assumption that the new range of antipsychotics, among which the widely prescribed Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroquel, is safer than the older and cheaper line of medicines.

 

However, the risk of death which is apparently induced by this line of antipsychotics is not very high, as it was estimated at 3% for a patient treated over a period of 10 years.

 

Despite the apparently low risk, the numbers were sufficient to make doctors limit the prescriptions of these medications, especially when it came to prescribing them to children and elderly patients, who are apparently the most prone to suffer the drugs’ side effects, which in clued, among others, express weight gain.