[Therapeutic effect of inosine in Tourette syndrome and its possible mechanism of action].

We found incidentally 3 years ago that inosine relieved the symptoms in a patient with Tourette syndrome. Since then, 36 patients suffered from Tourette syndrome were exclusively treated with inosine, 50-90 mg/kg daily in divided doses. The vocal and non-vocal tic attacks were counted either by the observation of an examiner or with a video-tape record. The clinical status was scored as the sum of the number of various tic attacks recorded during a period of 60 minutes (video-tape record) or 20 minutes (direct observation). According to the scores obtained from double blind cross-over trial (11 cases) and open trial (25 cases), the tic attacks were well controlled in 75% of patients treated. A follow-up study by the end of one year medication the efficacy of inosine was still impressive in 50% of patients. Since we have observed that inosine potentiated the release of dopamine from rat striatal synaptosomes, mimicked the action of some dopamine antagonists, it is suggested that inosine might behave as a dopamine antagonist and exerts its effect on Tourette syndrome as haloperidol does.