I added some URL for the medications discussed below. Although article
discusses elderly, it's the medications available I was interested in that help in HIV, anorexic patients, etc. gain weight.
These are just potential things that could be discussed with your doctor to help put on weight.
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Strategies to Increase Body Weight
Because of the increased morbidity and mortality among elderly
people who have a chronically low BMI or who have experienced involuntary weight loss, strategies to increase appetite, food
intake, and body weight are critically important.
While the use of nutritional supplements may result in small (if
any) improvements in weight, these supplements may not be effective in patients who are chronically underweight or cachectic.
Megestrol
acetate (MA), a synthetic progestin, has been reported to increase appetite and body weight in anorexic patients
with cancer and HIV infection. Yeh and colleagues examined the effects of MA in elderly nursing home patients who had
lost 5% or more of their body weight in the previous 3 months or who were at least 20% under their ideal BMI.
They
reported that 800 mg of MA per day resulted in increased appetite, increased food intake as measured by dietary recall, and
a delayed (13 weeks after the cessation of MA) increase in body weight.
The Nutrition, Exercise, and Metabolism Laboratory at the Donald
W. Reynolds Department of Geriatrics, University of Arkansas for Medical
Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, has also demonstrated
that MA resulted in a substantial increase in appetite, total daily energy intake, and body weight in a group of underweight
older men, This effect may be important to clinicians and registered dietitians who attempt to stimulate weight gain
in elderly people.
Other potential appetite stimulants that have been used in elderly people include oxandrolone,
an anabolic steroid that may increase appetite and stimulate muscle growth; and dronabinol, which is tetrahydrocannabinol,
a derivative of cannabis.
Dronabinol has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to stimulate
appetite in wasted patients with AIDS, and it prevents nausea due to chemotherapy in patients with cancer. Its use in treating
underweight elderly men and women has not yet been adequately
tested, but has shown some potential benefits.
Source:
Medscape's
Nursing Clinical Management Volume 3
Aging and Malnutrition: Treatment Guidelines CME
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MEGACE ® (megestrol acetate)
http://www.nursespdr.com/members/database/ndrhtml/megestrolacetate.htmlfor the PDF formated sheet that comes with this drug, to to Bristol
Meyers
http://www.bms.com/medicines/data/ and on the upper right
hand side, go to Megace.
Dronabinol
(Delta-9-tetrahydro-cannabinol)
http://www.nursespdr.com/members/database/ndrhtml/dronabinol.htmloxandrolone/anabolic steroid
nothing located.
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