Have you ever found yourself unconsciously tapping your foot or drumming your fingers. How about biting your nails or twirling your hair. These are common behaviors that a person may have and not really noticed. But what if you had an uncontrollable behavior that was noticeable like jumping up and down, making strange noises at inappropriate times, or flapping your arms uncontrollably? My little brother has been recently diagnosed with tourettes, but has actually been dealing with the syndrome his whole entire life.
My brother Sean has always been an extremely hyperactive, impulsive child. He had always been the kid that could never stay still, whether it was excessive clapping or running or making loud obnoxious noises, he was always in motion. Around the age of 5, Sean began stretching his back in a peculiar way. Even though my parents, my older brother, and I would tell Sean to stop stretching, he refused to listen – he said he couldn’t help it. As the years went on, Sean’s stretch turned from just pushing his stomach and chest out into a full on tic where he would push his chest out, place his arm behind his head and grab the skin from his neck, pulling it to the back. For years we tried to get him to stop. My parents had taken him to several doctors and tried numerous amounts of medication.
It wasn’t until Sean had been put on a study at North Shore Hospital, that we had found out that Sean was diagnosed with Tourettes Syndrome. This study tested the effects of the medication Abilify on children that deal with tics and turrets. For the first 3 months, Sean received a placebo pill and had been asked to complete exercises where he would try his hardest not to stretch for up to 15 minutes. While Sean tried to stop his stretching tic, he was unsuccessful. After months of receiving the placebo, North Shore had changed Sean’s medication to the Abilify. The Abilify affected Sean in several ways– making him more tired and causing him to eat less– but he continued with his impulsive tic. We actually found that while on the Abilify, Sean had developed other tics like jumping in place and clapping loudly. After months of being on Abilify, we did notice a slight decrease in his tics but he was also going through big physical changes.
During this study, Sean turned 15 and started to really grow and began going through puberty. He started playing ice hockey and becoming a lot more physical. Suddenly, we began to see a decrease in the frequency that he stretched. He started to stretch less and his jumping tic had completely gone away. This came as an odd occurrence to my family and I. Even though his tic wasn’t completely cured, it had gotten significantly better.
When the study came to an end and we wondered what would happen when Sean stopped taking the Abilify. Would he go back to stretching and ticing? Well, he went to visit my aunt in Texas immediately afterward and learned to wake board and drive her boat and had a great time. Two weeks later, he came home and he had stopped stretching altogether! We were astounded. He basically told us that he just decided to stop! It seemed almost as if stopping the Abilify improved his turrets. What had struck us as weird was that his turrets was better than they had been before the study, which meant that the Abilify wasn’t involved in his tourettes improving. This made me think, what really suppresses tourettes?
While researching, I’ve come across several treatments that suppress tourettes. Medication can be very effective when reducing tourettes symptoms and tics, but not one medication is capable of helping all people with tourettes syndrome. Behavioral treatments have also been able to suppress tic severity. Therapy has also been used to help one suppress or cope with their tourettes.
Yale Child Study Center tic and OCD outpatient specialty clinic ran a case study in 2006 to test how sever children’s tourettes symptoms and tics would be during their adolescence and early adulthood. Yale took 46 children under the age of 14 to participate in their study. They planned to interview each child at the time they had been dealing with tics and tourettes. After 3.8-12.8 years, an average of 7.6 years, Yale Child Study Center would reinterview the newly young adult that they had once interviewed years.
Once this study was completed, the results had shown that 85% of subject involved in this study had reported that their tic symptoms during childhood had reduced tremendously. “One half to two thirds of children with Tourettes Syndrome experience a substantial decrease or complete remission of tics by the end of adolescence” Peterson BSPine DSCohen PBrook JS Prospective, longitudinal study of tic, obsessive-compulsive, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in an epidemiological sample J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2001. Even though this study has several limitations on it, I can agree with the results because I’ve seen it first hand with my little brother. It is very possible that age can enable tourettes and tics. Personally I think that more long term prospective studies of patients with Tourettes Syndrome should be conducted to figure out of there is a common correlation between the severity of tics and tourettes symptoms and the age of each individual dealing with Tourettes Syndrome.
Resources:
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/tourette/detail_tourette.htm
http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=204374#ref-poa50082-2