As I mentioned already before, in terms of the comorbidities, that’s something that this population, over 90%, 96, some studies show, percent of patients with Tourette syndrome have comorbid neuropsychiatric conditions. The most common is ADHD, oftentimes anxiety, OCD, also in some cases depression, could be learning disabilities and other things. So with the current medications, these antidopaminergic or antipsychotic D2R modulators, we have noticed that they can unfortunately cause changes in hemoglobin A1C or other markers of these so-called metabolic side effects, as well as the weight gain is the primary challenge, especially keeping in mind that nowadays even children often tend to be overweight so it’s a real problem if they have not had a good response to the first line medications and they continue to have pretty significant tics and we were worried to give them a medication that will give them potential further weight gain...
As I mentioned already before, in terms of the comorbidities, that’s something that this population, over 90%, 96, some studies show, percent of patients with Tourette syndrome have comorbid neuropsychiatric conditions. The most common is ADHD, oftentimes anxiety, OCD, also in some cases depression, could be learning disabilities and other things. So with the current medications, these antidopaminergic or antipsychotic D2R modulators, we have noticed that they can unfortunately cause changes in hemoglobin A1C or other markers of these so-called metabolic side effects, as well as the weight gain is the primary challenge, especially keeping in mind that nowadays even children often tend to be overweight so it’s a real problem if they have not had a good response to the first line medications and they continue to have pretty significant tics and we were worried to give them a medication that will give them potential further weight gain. So sometimes we have, so far before this drug, we didn’t have a choice and we would try it. And then we had to give them a medication to lose weight, which was unfortunate. There’s another compound or drug currently that is used for tics. Again, it’s off-label. It’s called topiramate, Topamax, and that can cause weight loss, but the problem is these patients may have some cognitive fogging, and so that’s also not a good option.
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