This site is intended for healthcare professionals

Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages without signing in

Tourette's syndrome

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

Originally described in 1885, Tourette's syndrome (TS) or Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome is a childhood disease characterized by a combination of at least two motor tics and one vocal tic that is chronic (more than 1 year) in nature (1)

Tourette's syndrome is the association of:

  • motor tics, such as:
    • eye blinking
    • throat clearing
    • sniffing
    • arm thrusting
    • kicking
    • shoulder shrugging
  • involuntary vocalisations:
    • may be obscene (coprolalia)

Patients commonly show psychological psychiatric co-morbidity:

  • studies conducted at specialist clinics have revealed that pure Tourette's syndrome (without any associated psychiatric morbidity) was observed in only 10 % of the patients
  • associated behavioural spectrum of Tourette's syndrome plus includes:
    • most common
      • obsessive compulsive disorder
      • attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
      • impulsiveness
    • other conditions
      • depression
      • impulse control disorders in adults (1,2)

The underlying pathophysiology of Tourette syndrome is not fully understood (3).

Reference:


Related pages

Create an account to add page annotations

Annotations allow you to add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation. E.g. a website or number. This information will always show when you visit this page.