Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012:8:95-104.
doi: 10.2147/NDT.S12990. Epub 2012 Mar 12.

Update on the role of antipsychotics in the treatment of Tourette syndrome

Daniel Huys  1 , Katja Hardenacke, Pia Poppe, Christina Bartsch, Burak Baskin, Jens Kuhn
Affiliations

Update on the role of antipsychotics in the treatment of Tourette syndrome

Daniel Huys et al. Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. 2012.

Abstract

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neuropsychiatric disorder with typical onset in childhood and characterized by chronic occurrence of motor and vocal tics. The disorder can lead to serious impairments of both quality of life and psychosocial functioning, particularly for those individuals displaying complex tics. In such patients, drug treatment is recommended. The pathophysiology of TS is thought to involve a dysfunction of basal ganglia-related circuits and hyperactive dopaminergic innervations. Congruently, dopamine receptor antagonism of neuroleptics appears to be the most efficacious approach for pharmacological intervention. To assess the efficacy of the different neuroleptics available, a systematic, keyword-related search in PubMed (National Library of Medicine, Washington, DC) was undertaken. Much information on the use of antipsychotics in the treatment of TS is based on older data. Our objective was to give an update and therefore we focused on papers published in the last decade (between 2001 and 2011). Accordingly, the present review aims to summarize the current and evidence-based knowledge on the risk-benefit ratio of both first and second generation neuroleptics in TS.

Keywords: Tourette; Tourette syndrome; antipsychotics; neuroleptics.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Number of patients* with TS, treated with each specific agent in studies and case reports published until May 2011. Notes: *Due to the lack of proper documentation of some of the reviewed studies and limited access to some articles on this topic, the literature review presented here is not exhaustive. The number of patients listed here should therefore be understood as a minimum of patients treated with this drug. It is possible that some of the investigated agents were prescribed to more patients in the context of further studies that were not included in this literature review.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Mink JW. Neurobiology of basal ganglia and Tourette syndrome: basal ganglia circuits and thalamocortical outputs. Adv Neurol. 2006;99:89–98. - PubMed
    1. Jankovic J. Differential diagnosis and etiology of tics. Adv Neurol. 2001;85:15–29. - PubMed
    1. Wong DF, Brasić JR, Singer HS, et al. Mechanisms of dopaminergic and serotengeric neurotransmission in Tourette syndrome: clues from an in vivo neurochemistry study with PET. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2008;33(6):1239–1251. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wong DF, Singer HS, Brandt J, et al. D2-like dopamine receptor density in Tourette syndrome measured by PET. J Nucl Med. 1997;38(8):1243–1247. - PubMed
    1. Yoon DY, Gause CD, Leckman JF, Singer HS. Frontal dopaminergic abnormality in Tourette syndrome: a postmortem analysis. J Neurol Sci. 2007;255(1–2):50–56. - PubMed