Ambify drug2/21/2023 ![]() ![]() He says he has discontinued the drug’s use in 15 to 20 percent of the autistic people he treats, one or two of whom have gained more than 100 pounds.Ī string of lawsuits over the past several years have charged that aripiprazole’s developers, the pharmaceutical companies Otsuka Pharmaceutical and Bristol-Myers Squibb, did not adequately warn users of the drug’s potential side effects - including compulsive behaviors such as gambling, sex addiction and excessive shopping. “The weight gain is not subtle,” says Eric London, director of autism treatment research at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities. And perhaps most concerning, aripiprazole appears to cause just as much weight gain as risperidone, compounding a problem many children with autism already have. ![]() It might also be linked to heart problems in autistic children. As with many antipsychotic medications, long-term use of aripiprazole can lead to tardive dyskinesia, as it did for Jaymes. But a decade’s worth of data suggest that is untrue. The drug, marketed as Abilify, initially had a reputation of having fewer side effects than risperidone, its only competitor in this population. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved aripiprazole for children with autism. Of all the drugs Jaymes had been prescribed, aripiprazole was “one of the worst,” she says. He had fewer angry outbursts, but Lesovoy decided the side effects were not worth it. (Jaymes was later diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, which his doctors say explains the leg-kicking.) After a year on the drug, Jaymes had gained 50 pounds. When he started with aripiprazole, his mother says, he began to flail his arms, kick his legs and scrunch up his face without warning - severe involuntary muscle spasms called tardive dyskinesia. There were other, more disturbing changes. Any chance he got to get food, he would take it,” Lesovoy says. Jaymes was underweight when he started taking aripiprazole, but within a few weeks, he was always hungry: “He would sneak food he would eat huge amounts at mealtimes. “I didn’t have a lot of life experience, so all I knew to do was what the professionals told me.” She worried Jaymes might also experience side effects but felt she had few choices left. She had taken the medication herself a year earlier for her own autism and bipolar disorder, and she had experienced an unusual side effect: trouble urinating, which disappeared after she stopped taking the drug. Jaymes’ mother, Amber Lesovoy, was familiar with aripiprazole. That drug had been approved in 2009 to treat irritability in autistic children aged 6 and older. When he was 10, another doctor suggested Jaymes try a different antipsychotic: aripiprazole. Still, Jaymes acted out at home and at school, and continued to do so for years. A few years later, he added a second medication to the mix - the seizure drug valproic acid - although Jaymes does not have seizures. In 2006, when Jaymes was 2, the doctor prescribed risperidone - an antipsychotic medication that had been approved earlier that year to treat irritability in autistic children aged 5 and older. Jaymes’ pediatrician suggested behavioral and speech therapy, but neither approach reined in the boy’s aggression. At 18 months of age, he was diagnosed with autism. ![]() He hit and bit his parents, and he tore apart his and his sisters’ toys. Even as a toddler, Jaymes Lesovoy was violent. ![]()
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