17 Jan (GAIA HEALTH) –  Antipsychotics are notoriously dangerous drugs, causing life-threatening diabetes, along with severe neurological damage. Authors of a new study claim that Saphris is harmless, but examination shows that their study doesn’t come close to showing safety. It’s pure junk science.

                                                                                                                                                              by Heidi Stevenson

Antipsychotic pharmaceutical drugs, such as Zyprexa, are noted for their severe adverse effects. The second generation of these drugs, such as Zyprexa (olanzapine) and Abilify (aripiprazole) were initially touted as relatively free of these effects, but the truth came out fairly quickly: They are at least as bad as their predecessors, possibly even worse. So now, there’s an attempt to find a second generation antipsychotic that doesn’t carry the same extreme dangers.

In 2009, the FDA approved two new second-generation antipsychotics into psychiatry’s repertoire: asenapine (Saphris) and iloperidone (Fanapt). Now—well over two years later—we’re finally seeing a study on rats comparing the health effects of these two new drugs with olanzapine (Zyprexa). This sort of study should, of course, have been done before these drugs were even tested on humans, not after they’ve been approved!  But, the story gets even worse.

In this case, the comparison was made with olanzapine (Zyprexa), which is infamous for causing severe metabolic syndrome leading to diabetes. This study, just published in PLoS, purports to show that one of them, asenapine – Saphris – not only fares well compared to olanzapine, but also does no harm related to metabolic syndrome.

The problem is that nothing in the study actually supports the claim.

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