Investigational medicine for Tourette syndrome promising

Medscape highlighted new research from the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's Hospital's Donald Gilbert that found a new drug reduces tic severity in children and adolescents with Tourette syndrome (TS) without exacerbating common psychiatric comorbidities.

Previous research found the drug called ecopipam reduced the primary endpoint of tic severity scores by 30% compared to placebo after 12 weeks, but it was unknown if the drug would affect the common comorbidities of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression that are often present.

Gilbert, MD, professor in the Department of Pediatrics in UC's College of Medicine and a pediatric movement disorders and Tourette syndrome specialist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital's Division of Neurology, presented his findings at the International Congress of Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders 2024.

He told Medscape the two key findings were "first, that patients with a nonmotor diagnosis like depression or ADHD did not do any worse in terms of tic efficacy; and second, we didn't find any evidence that any of the nonmotor symptoms of Tourette's got worse with ecopipam."

Read the Medscape article.

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