Tourette’s Syndrome

No surprise here, but I was just sitting on a plane.

Again.

When I heard people sniggering.

Why? A young man in his thirties was walking along trying to find his seat. As he did so he was constantly grunting, saying partially intelligible words and jerking. As a clinician it was immediately obvious that he almost certainly had Tourette’s syndrome, a developmental disorder of the brain in which people have involuntary, stereotyped, repetitive motor and phonic tics. Some people with the disorder exclaim obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks, which together are known as coprolalia.

The illness was originally named for Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette, (1859–1904), a French physician and neurologist, who published an account of nine patients with the now classic clinical features in 1885.

You may not often see someone with this problem, but it is good to know what it is, and that it is an illness that can cause great distress.

We have recently made some interesting discoveries about Tourette’s syndrome.

1. It is an illness involving the dopamine systems in the basal ganglia of the brain together with some regions of the midbrain and some very specific linked regions of the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and limbic system.
2. In adults with Tourette’s syndrome, the prefrontal cortex is a little smaller than normal, and the corpus callosum linking the hemispheres is larger than expected. These findings correlate with problems in the way in which people transfer information between the hemispheres and modulate attention.
3. Very recent evidence has shown us that there are small hyper-intense lesions in the deep regions of the brain in people with Tourette’s, obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit disorder. These three problems seem to have a number of biological links and two or more may co-exist in the same person. In children and adolescents with Tourette’s, the tics tend to get better over time but obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms become more severe and persistent as they get older.
4. There is important evidence that in some people, Tourette’s is linked to a post-infectious autoimmune disorder, and many have antibodies directed against neurons in the brain.
5. There is also a link between Tourette’s and having low iron stores. Low iron stores are common in people with many chronic inflammatory illnesses. Iron is crucially important in the development of key regions of the brain. We do not have any viable evidence that giving people iron supplements will reduce the severity of Tourette’s, but it is something that needs to be examined in a formal study.

People have typically been treated with antipsychotic medicines such as risperidone that block dopamine receptors in the brain, and they can certainly help. A more recent approach is to use medicines like aripiprazole that modulate dopamine activity in the brain. A recent study done by some colleagues in the United Kingdom have confirmed that aripiprazole seems to be very helpful in about half of patients with Tourette’s, though neurological side effects do sometimes occur.

There has recently been a lot of interest in Habit Reversal Therapy: a behavioral treatment for tics. The therapy takes a lot of time and effort, but it is very interesting that behavior therapy can help with a neurological illness.

There is no published data on the use of Integrated Medicine in the treatment of people with Tourette’s, but many experts have reported that some patients have been helped with homeopathy and acupuncture.

That guy in the next seat who is cursing may not just be mean and uncouth. He may be suffering.

But maybe not for much longer.

We are getting very close. Not just to discovering the physical basis of the illness, but perhaps its meaning and purpose as well.

New discoveries are coming thick and fast, and I shall keep posting about those that will help individuals and illuminate the principles of Integrated Medicine.