Natural Medicines Newsletter

Volume 1, Issue 23, 06/25/2009

Question

Is melatonin supplementation effective for the treatment of antipsychotic induced tardive dyskinesia (TD)?

Answer

It is well known that free radical generation is not only common in the central nervous system, but is believed to be associated with a number of neurodegenerative disease states such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and even antipsychotic induced tardive dyskinesia (TD).(1-6)  As such, it has been thought that the use of antioxidants could prevent or treat such diseases.  As it relates to antipsychotic induced TD, it is known that 3-5% of schizophrenic patients who take the older typical antipsychotics will develop TD within 5 years of treatment.(7,8)  This can increase to 68% after 20-25 years.(9)  Fortunately, the development of the atypical antipsychotics has reduced the development of this unwanted adverse drug event.10  While the risk of TD is lower with atypical antipsychotics, they can still cause it with the incidence ranging from 0.8 to 5.3% in patients with schizophrenia.(11) 

Tardive dyskinesia is generally characterized as a patient with persistent, hyperkinetic, involuntary movements of the tongue, jaw, trunk and/or extremities.  This can be very uncomfortable and even irreversible for some patients.  Therefore....

Other keywords found in this issue: AIMS, Abnormal Involuntary movement scale

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