1. Academic Validation
  2. Tetrabenazine treatment for tardive dyskinesia: assessment by randomized videotape protocol

Tetrabenazine treatment for tardive dyskinesia: assessment by randomized videotape protocol

  • Am J Psychiatry. 1999 Aug;156(8):1279-81. doi: 10.1176/ajp.156.8.1279.
W G Ondo 1 P A Hanna J Jankovic
Affiliations

Affiliation

  • 1 Department of Neurology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA. [email protected]
Abstract

Objective: Tetrabenazine, a monoamine depleter and Dopamine Receptor blocker, is used to treat several hyperkinetic movement disorders. The authors studied the use of tetrabenazine for tardive dyskinesia.

Method: Twenty patients with tardive dyskinesia (mean duration = 43.7 months) were videotaped before and after tetrabenazine treatment. Randomized videotapes were scored with the motor subset of the modified Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS) by raters blind to pre- or posttreatment status.

Results: One patient did not tolerate tetrabenazine owing to sedation. The remaining 19 were rated after a mean of 20.3 weeks at a mean tetrabenazine dose of 57.9 mg/day. There were significant improvements in mean scores on both the patient AIMS self-rating and the AIMS motor subset evaluated by the blind videotape raters. All 19 patients continued to take tetrabenazine after the study.

Conclusions: Tetrabenazine was well tolerated and resulted in significant improvements in AIMS scores for patients with refractory tardive dyskinesia.

Figures
Products