Improvement of Tourette syndrome symptoms after intractable temporal lobe epileptic surgery: a case report

Abstract

Background

The comorbidities of either epilepsy or Tourette syndrome (TS) are heterogeneous. However, the co-occurrence of epilepsy and TS conditions is rarely encountered, let alone effective treatments that address both neurologic disorders at the same time.

Methods

We report a 24-year-old female patient who was diagnosed with TLE and TS. She presented for seizure control. After evaluation with stereo-electroencephalography and electrocorticography monitoring, the patient underwent a resective surgery treatment and was followed for 9 months.

Results

At the last follow-up, the patient remained seizure free and unexpectedly showed great improvement in TS symptoms and its psychiatric comorbidities.

Conclusion

This anecdotal case highlights the close association between TLE and TS and we suggest that epilepsy and TS share some common pathophysiologic mechanisms.

Keywords:

• epilepsy
• Tourette syndrome
• obsessive-compulsive disorder
• depression
• anxiety

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the patient for her very willing cooperation and interest in our research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Patient consent

Presentation of this case and the data obtained from this patient followed approval from our institution’s Ethics Committee and written informed consent from the patient.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by “Beijing Hospitals Authority” Ascent Plan (DFL20190801). and National Natural Science Foundation of China (82071454).