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Pharmacological treatment of Tourette’s syndrome: from the past to the future

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Abstract

Tourette’s syndrome (TS) is a neuropsychiatric disease featuring tics and vocal tics, with a prevalence of approximately 1%, including 75% of the total number of male patients. TS seriously disturbs the patients’ career, education, and life and brings a serious and unbearable psychological burden to the patients themselves and their families. At present, there are no specific clinical medications recommended for treating TS. Therefore, it is necessary to select the appropriate medication for symptomatic treatment based on the doctor’s personal experience and the patient’s symptoms, with the main goal of relieving symptoms, thus improving the patient's social skills and psychological problems. Here we conducted a comprehensive search on PubMed to review and organize the history and current status of the development of drug therapy for TS through a timeline format. We also systematically evaluated the effects of each drug for TS treatment to summarize the current problems and new research directions and to provide some ideas for clinical treatment.

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Abbreviations

TS:

Tourette’s syndrome

YGTSS:

The Yale Global Tic Severity Scale

DSM-5:

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

ADHD:

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

OCD:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

CSTC:

Cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical

SMA:

Supplementary motor area

GWAS:

Genome-wide association study

PANDAS:

Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal

GABHS:

Group A β-hemolytic streptococcal

CBIT:

Comprehensive behavioral intervention for tics

DBS:

Deep brain stimulation

VMAT2:

Vesicular monoamine transporter type 2

EPS:

Extrapyramidal symptoms

TD:

Tardive dyskinesia

TSSS:

Tourette’s Symptom Severity Scale

CGI:

Clinical global impression score

AMPA:

α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazole-4-propionic acid

TTS:

Total tic score

TIS:

Total impairment scores

TBZ:

Tetrabenazine

DTBZ:

Deutetrabenazine

TSSL:

Tourette’s Syndrome Symptom List

THC:

Delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol

TNP:

Transdermal nicotine patch

TMS:

Transcranial magnetic stimulation

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Acknowledgements

We hereby wish to express our sincere gratitude to all those who have helped us with this paper. We would like to first express our sincere thanks and appreciations to our supervisor, Dr. Longxiang Xie, whose advice and encouragement have given us insight into these drug studies.

Funding

This review was financially supported by the Science & Technology Department of Sichuan Province (2021YFS0103).

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  1. Hao Gong and Xiangyu Du contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Basic Medical Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng, People’s Republic of China

    Hao Gong, Xiangyu Du & Yaowu Du

  2. Department of General Surgery, West China Hospital Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610041, People’s Republic of China

    Hao Gong, Xiangyu Du & Anping Su

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  1. Hao Gong
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  2. Xiangyu Du
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  3. Anping Su
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  4. Yaowu Du
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Contributions

HG: investigation; writing—original draft; writing—review & editing; XD: investigation; writing—original draft; writing—review & editing; AS: funding acquisition; supervision; YD: conceptualization; project administration.

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Correspondence to Yaowu Du.

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Gong, H., Du, X., Su, A. et al. Pharmacological treatment of Tourette’s syndrome: from the past to the future. Neurol Sci 45, 941–962 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-023-07172-2

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