Scientists have found a possible cause of Tourette’s syndrome in a discovery which could “lay the foundation for a new generation of treatments’”. More than 300,000 people are thought to live with the condition in the UK. It causes a person to make involuntary sounds and movements called tics.
Physical tics can include blinking, eye rolling, grimacing and jerking of the head or limbs. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic medical group in the US analysed more than 43,000 individual cells from postmortem brain tissue of people with and without the condition.
They found that sufferers have half as many of a specific type of brain cell, interneurons, that helps calm overactive movement signals.
People with the condition also showed reduced energy production in medium spiny neurone, which help to send movement signals, and inflammation in the brain’s immune cells, microglia.
Study co-author Dr Yifan Wang said: “We’re seeing different types of brain cells reacting to stress and possibly communicating with each other in ways that could be driving symptoms.”
Genomic scientist Dr Alexej Abyzov added: “Tourette patients seem to have the same functional genes as everyone else but the coordination between them is broken.”
There is currently no cure for Tourette’s syndrome. Dr Abyzov said the findings “may help lay the foundation for a new generation of treatments”.
He added: “If we can understand how these brain cells are altered and how they interact, we may be able to intervene earlier and more precisely.”
The team now plans to study how these brain changes develop over time and look for genetic factors that may help explain the disorder.
The findings were published int he journal Biological Psychiatry.