Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Antipsychotic medications are used to treat various psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and Tourette syndrome. However, these drugs are often associated with serious adverse events. One adverse event that is of concern to date is movement disorders. It is particularly interesting that there have been case reports on antipsychotic-induced symptoms of Tourette syndrome, which are sudden, repetitive, nonrhythmic muscle movements or vocalizations known as tics. This adverse event is not well characterized and is paradoxical because antipsychotics are used to treat Tourette syndrome. Our group has already performed and published a systematic literature review on this topic to better understand the complex relationship. Because most studies were case reports and had many methodological limitations, there is a need to investigate this relationship using a larger population database. Therefore, our group will be using a database with access to a random sample of 9 million subjects in the United states in order to better characterize the risk of tics as well as other tic-related symptoms associated with different antipsychotic drugs. We hope that our results would lead to the better understanding of the mechanisms of tics in the perspective of antipsychotics, more appropriate and safer utilization of antipsychotic drugs, and better treatment of Tourette syndrome.