What is it about?
. . . but we demand the evidence. Here we review the evidence. For different treatments, the evidence is of different quality. Some of the strongest evidence, numerically, is for 3 traditional Chinese medication mixtures. However, the studies are flawed, and giving hundreds of compounds is a hard pill to swallow (ha) when our profession decades ago upgraded from willow bark tea to identifying salicylic acid as the active ingredient, and then further upgraded to acetylsalicylic acid (i.e., aspirin) as safer and more effective than the natural compound.
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Why is it important?
A large fraction of American Tourette patients turn to alternative medicine for treatment, so this review is timely. Ironically, one of the 2 or 3 treatments for TS with the strongest evidence base for efficacy and safety involves no medication risk: behavior therapy with CBIT or ERP. Yet lots of patients (or their guardian) would often rather try something of unknown efficacy or risk, instead.
Perspectives
This was fun to work on. I was a bit player in creating this manuscript--a large collection of folks helped review and verify the published literature, and we benefited from a librarian and from the leadership and writing of Dr. Tamara Pringsheim. P.S. I don't have a Ph.D., but missed that detail in the first draft. Also, I'm very grateful for my ORCiD--do you have any idea how many K. Blacks have published something in a biomedical journal?
Dr Kevin J. Black
Washington University in St. Louis
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Complementary and Integrative Medicine for the Treatment of Tourette's Syndrome, Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, December 2025, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/mdc3.70464.
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