Short-term versus longer term pimozide therapy in Tourette's syndrome: a preliminary study.

The authors randomized 10 patients (age range, 7 to 13 years) with Tourette's syndrome who had achieved a stable level of tic control on open-label pimozide to continue on pimozide (n = 6) or be withdrawn from therapy (n = 4) in a double-blind study. The median time to end point (the time when an increased dose of study medication was required to control tics) was 231 days (continued) versus 37 days (withdrawn), and the survival curves were significantly different (p = 0.02). Chronic, longer term treatment with pimozide appears to be more effective in controlling the course of tics than using the drug acutely to treat an exacerbation.