A meta-analysis of clinical trials evaluating the effectiveness of aripiprazole for the treatment of Tourette's disorder (TD) in children and adolescents showed a significantly greater overall improvement in total tics and tic severity from pretreatment to post-treatment for the aripiprazole compared to the placebo group. The drug was safe, with drowsiness, nausea, and headache being the most common adverse effects, according to the study published in Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology website until August 20, 2016.
The article "Effectiveness and Tolerability of Aripiprazole in Children and Adolescents with Tourette's Disorder: A Meta-Analysis" describes an assessment of ten studies that included 302 patients with a mean age of 11.6 years. Coauthors Yueying Liu, MD and Chunhong Wang, MD, Jiangnan University (Wuxi), Hong Ni, MD and Lili Li, MD, Soochow University Affiliated Children's Hospital (Suzhou), Zaohuo Chen, MD, Nanjing Medical University (Wuxi), and Zhen Weng, PhD, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Suzhou), China, report on the therapeutic potential of aripiprazole, an atypical antipsychotic drug, for treating TD in a pediatric population.
"Treatment of children with Tourette's remains challenging for many clinicians. This study highlights the effectiveness of aripiprazole for this group of patients," says Harold S. Koplewicz, MD, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology and President of the Child Mind Institute in New York.
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