[Tardive dyskinesia: I. Physiopathology and treatment]

Reliability and clinical utility of a Portuguese version of the Abnormal Involuntary Movements Scale (AIMS) for tardive dyskinesia in Brazilian patients

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the reliability and clinical utility of a Portuguese version of the Abnormal Involuntary Movements Scale (AIMS). Videotaped interviews with 16 psychiatric inpatients treated with antipsychotic drugs for at least 5 years were evaluated. Reliability was assessed by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between three raters, two with and one without clinical training in psychopathology. Clinical utility was assessed by the difference between the scores of patients with (N = 11) and without (N = 5) tardive dyskinesia (TD). Patients with TD exhibited a higher severity of global evaluation by the AIMS (sum of scores: 4.2 +/- 0.9 vs 0.4 +/- 0.2; score on item 8: 2.3 +/- 0.3 vs 0.4 +/- 0.2, TD vs controls). The ICC for the global evaluation was fair between the two skilled raters (0.58-0.62) and poor between these raters and the rater without clinical experience (0.05-0.29). Thus, we concluded that the Portuguese version of the AIMS shows an acceptable inter-rater reliability, but only between clinically skilled raters, and that it is clinically useful.

[Prevalence of tardive dyskinesia among inpatients in psychiatric hospitals in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil]

The authors present a cross-study on the occurrence of tardive dyskinesia (TD) among inpatients of psychiatric units of the city of Salvador during the month of September, 1992. After reviewing the literature, they comment the average prevalence found for TD: 1.65% in a population of 2,115 patients using a protocol based on the Simpson Scale.

A study on the action of two calcium channel blockers (verapamil and flunarizine) upon an experimental model of tardive dyskinesia in rats

Tardive dyskinesia (TD), a serious complications of neuroleptic chronic use, has no effective therapy yet. We performed an experiment to study the action on TD, of the calcium channel blockers (CCB) drugs, verapamil and flunarizine. We obtained the TD model in rats, administering haloperidol for a 21-day period. After this, the stereotyped movement induced by apomorphine was rated. The CCB drugs were administered in acute (in the 28th day) and chronic (for 8 days, after the 25th day) experiments. Acutely, verapamil increased the stereotyped behaviour, and promoted a reduction of it in the chronic experiment. The results suggest that CCB drugs should be tested in clinical trials of TD.