Tourette Syndrome Signs & Symptoms - (Turretts Syndrome) OmniMedicalSearch.com

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Tourette Syndrome

Signs and Symptoms

The main symptoms of Tourette Syndrome is the presence of two types of tics, motor or vocal tics.

Characteristics of tics:

Tics can become more severe, more frequent or longer when the person is under a lot of stress.
Tics can be suppressed for a short period of time, but the tension builds up and eventually will be released through a tic.
Tics often subside during activities that demand attention and deep concentration and decline during sleep.
A tic can be controlled for a short period of time, but it requires a lot of energy and concentration. Attention focused on other activities (having a conversation or paying attention to a teacher in class) could be seriously impaired as the subject attempts to exert control over their tic.
Tics can be divided in two distinct categories: simple tic and complex tic.

Motor Tics
Motor tics develop as sudden, rapid, recurrent, involuntary muscles movements in the head and facial area. There are two types of motor tics: simple tics and complex tics. Simple motor tics involve an abrupt, brief, isolated movement of a small number of muscles or limited muscles groups.This category of tics includes: eye blinking, facial grimacing, facial twitching, neck stretching, shoulder shrugging, head or shoulder jerking.

Complex motor tics involve distinct movement patterns of several groups of muscles. This category of tics includes: repetitive squatting, skipping, or hopping, repetitive touching of others, deep knee bending, jumping, smelling of objects, hand gesturing, head shaking, leg kicking, or turning in a circle.

Motor tics can spread to other regions of the body (shoulders, arms, legs and torso area), but the anatomical location of the tics can change over the time. It is not common for tics to evolve into complex form of manifestation as self-injury behaviors, like excessive scratching or lip biting.

Vocal Tics
Vocal tics are sudden, involuntary, recurrent vocalizations. Vocal tics occur as single, simple sounds (grunting, throat clearing, sighing, barking, hissing, sniffing, tongue clicking, or snorting) in the beginning and can evolve to a more complex forms. Complex vocal tics involve palilalia (repeating certain phrases or words out of context), echolalia (repeating the last words or phrases spoken by others) or coprolalia (explosive cursing or compulsive utterance of obscene words or phrases).

Associated Disorders
Teenagers with Tourette Syndrome may develop associated behavior problems including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD - a neurological disorder characterized by limited ability to focus, impulsive behavior and overactivity), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD - a disorder characterized by repeated or compulsive actions or rituals), learning disabilities and sleeping problems.

TS Disorder Progression
Tourette Syndrome' symptoms evolve from simple to complex and from motor tics to vocal tics. They first occur in the head and neck region and can spread to more muscle groups from other area of the body including trunk and extremities. Patients that develop TS syndrome display a combination/ cluster of different motor and vocal tics.

Tics can occur once or many times during the day and they follow a waxing and waning course decreasing or increasing in frequency and intensity. Tics are more severe in the first years after the onset of the syndrome and starting with the mid-teen to the late teen years and early adulthood the tics improve for the majority of the patient. Although Tourette syndrome is a chronic disorder with life long symptoms, there are patients that may have weeks or even years with few or no symptoms.

Only 10% of the patients affected by Tourette syndrome have a progressive course that lasts into adult years. For most patients, symptoms may completely resolve during adulthood.

Article by Alina Morrow, MA
Medical Writer,
OmniMedicalSearch.com