Raven Press, Ltd., New York 0 International League Against Epilepsy

Summary: A variety of movement disorders are known to occur in association with carbamazepine (CBZ) therapy in adults and children, but development of tics has been described infrequently and only in patients with underly-ing Tourette’s syndrome or other movement disorders. We report 3 children with epilepsy who developed facial motor tics after initiation of CBZ for complex partial sei-zures. All 3 had documented CBZ blood levels in the therapeutic range at the time, and none had other symp-toms or signs of clinical intoxication. Neurologic exami-nations were normal in 2 and showed developmental de-lay of expressive language in the third. Brain imaging was normal in all. After development of the tics in 2, CBZ was continued at the same or higher dose, and the tics abated and then ceased spontaneously s 6 months. In the third child, the tics ceased after CBZ discontinuation. These cases demonstrate that CBZ can induce simple motor tics in children. These idiosyncratic reactions may be tran-sient and do not always necessitate drug discontinuation. Key Words: Anticonvulsants-Carbamazepine-Drug toxicity-Children-Tic-Movement disorder. A variety of drug-induced movement disorders have been described in association with antiepilep-tic drug (AED) therapy, most often with phenytoin (PHT), (Chadwick et al., 1976). Carbamazepine (CBZ) has been implicated as a possible or probable causative factor of various involuntary movements in 26 patients, half of whom were children (Bercho