Pimozide for tics in Tourette’s syndrome

Pimozide appears to be an effective treatment for syndrome severity of tics in Tourette’s syndrome. However there are concerns about side effects, namely prolonged QTc interval in ECG, and there were no trials with more than six months follow up.

A Cochrane review included 6 studies with a total of 162 subjects, age range 7 to 53 years. Pimozide was compared with: placebo and haloperidol (two trials), placebo (one trial), haloperidol (one trial), and risperidone (two trials). Methodological quality was rated ‘fair’ for all studies.

Studies used different outcome measurement scales for assessing tic severity and adverse effects. Significant clinical heterogeneity made meta-analysis inappropriate. Pimozide was superior to placebo in three studies, though it caused more side effects than placebo in one of these. Pimozide was inferior to haloperidol in one of three studies (the other two showed no significant difference between the drugs), which also showed significantly fewer side effects associated with pimozide. No significant differences between pimozide and risperidone were detected.

Comment: The evidence is downgraded by by study quality (inadequate or unclear allocation concealment).

Ədəbiyyat

1. Pringsheim T, Marras C. Pimozide for tics in Tourette's syndrome. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2009 Apr 15;(2):CD006996.