Nutritional supplements and complementary/alternative medicine in Tourette syndrome.

OBJECTIVE: Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neuropsychiatric disorder associated with motor and vocal tics. Some people with TS have reported using alternative or complementary medicine (CAM), including nutritional supplements to control their tics. In a recent national survey, approximately 40% of people reported having used CAM in the prior year. We attempted to explore the use of supplements and other CAM among TS patients. METHOD: We developed a survey instrument based on anecdotal accounts of CAM use and distributed it to the mailing list of the New York Chapter of the Tourette Syndrome Association (n=500) and the subscription list of Latitudes, a newsletter exploring CAM treatments for neurological conditions (n=750). Responses were entered in a database and analyzed using SPSS version 10. RESULTS: Of 115 respondents, 87.8% reported using 1 or more of 29 nutritional supplements to control symptoms. Many also reported using other CAM. Most supplement users reported an improvement in tics. CONCLUSIONS: Although these results are not generalizable, they provide no evidence that use of supplements and other CAM is rarer among TS patients than in the general population. Given that most of our respondents were also using conventional medication, further study of the use of supplements and other CAM therapies by people with TS, the safety and efficacy of such therapies in this population, and possible interactions of such therapies with conventional treatment seems warranted.

Differential scanning calorimetric studies of the thermal stability of plasmid DNA complexed with cationic lipids and polymers.

The thermal stabilities of supercoiled (SC) and linear/open circular (LIN/OC) forms of plasmid DNA when complexed with cationic lipids or cationic polymers used for cellular transfection were assessed using differential scanning calorimetry. Differences in the stability of SC DNA produced by the cationic lipids DOTAP (1,2-dioleoyltrimethyl ammoniumpropane chloride), DSTAP (1,2-distearyltrimethyl ammoniumpropane chloride), and DDAB (dimethyldioctadecylammonium bromide) upon complexation suggest possible effects of headgroup structure on the stability of SC DNA and minimal effects of lipid acyl chain saturation/unsaturation. Complexation of DNA with the cationic polymers polyethylenimine (PEI) or poly-L-lysine (PLL) (but not poly-L-arginine) resulted in a decreased stability of SC DNA when the DNA was in charge excess, although all polymers stabilized SC DNA when the polymer was in charge excess. The effects of these cationic polymers on the stability of SC DNA can be explained by changes produced in the tertiary structure of SC DNA upon binding and may reflect the importance of the topological constraint of supercoiling upon the stability of the resulting complexes.