Functional and organic tic disorders . . . and other stories

Diagnosing functional ticsA few years ago, a German YouTube channel, Gewitter im Kopf (thunderstorm in the head), created by a young man with Tourette’s syndrome was blamed for provoking a mass sociogenic illness when numerous teenagers presented with tics and other behaviours characteristic of Tourette’s syndrome. Distinguishing between functional and organic tic disorders isn’t straightforward. When eight experts in the diagnosis and management of tics were asked to study videos of 24 adults with primary tics, functional tics, or both, inter-rater agreement was only moderate (J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry doi:10.1136/jnnp-2022-330822).Sydenham’s choreaOn the subject of movement disorders, a survey in the UK and Ireland finds that Sydenham’s chorea, once a common cause of purposeless, involuntary, non-stereotypical movements of the trunk or extremities in children, is now extremely rare. Over 24 months from November 2018, only 43 reports met the case definition. This gives an annual incidence of 1.6 per million in…
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