Not just tics – in honor of awareness month: what do you not know about Tourette's syndrome?

Today marks the beginning of awareness month for the most common tic disorder in the world, known as Tourette syndrome. In Israel there are about 30 thousand people with Tourette's, and half of them are children. This is according to a report published by the Center for Disease Prevention in the USA.

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The syndrome is a cognitive neurological disorder that manifests itself in tics, some vocal and some motor. The tics, involuntary actions performed by the body, can stem from many reasons, some physical and some mental.

In the case of Tourette's syndrome, tics are neurological, and are created due to "shorts" in the passage of information in the brain – something that causes the brain to give excessive commands to the body. The syndrome is named after a French neurologist named Georges Gilles de la Tourette, who diagnosed it for the first time as early as 1885.

According to the American Ministry of Health, the number of people diagnosed with Tourette's among men is three and even four times higher than among women. Unlike the Ministry of Health in Israel, which does not conduct surveillance or publish data on the subject, the American Center for Disease Prevention conducts international surveillance on the subject.

According to the studies carried out to date, Tourette's syndrome is diagnosed among most people already in early childhood, between the ages of 5-10. For the most part, the cases in which involuntary tic syndrome appears in adults are not due to Tourette's, but for other reasons.

It also appears from the information accumulated so far, that Tourette's syndrome is more common among children who have one of their parents or a close relative with the syndrome. These children are significantly more exposed to Tourette's. Despite this, due to the fact that some people with Tourette's syndrome do not have a family history of this phenomenon – Tourette's is not defined as a genetic disorder.

In Israel, as in most countries in the Western world, awareness of Tourette's syndrome has increased significantly in the last decade – however, it is still a disorder that is less known among the general public, when the resources for studying and treating Tourette's are limited.

For example, in Israel there is only one tourette clinic for children, located at Schneider Hospital in Petah Tikva. The adult population has two centers for movement disorders, one of which is located at the Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and the other is located at the Sheba Tel Hashomer Medical Center.

These two centers deal, among other things, with Tourette's syndrome, and are the only ones in Israel that provide treatment for those suffering from this disorder. Although a cure for this syndrome has not yet been found, over the years a number of treatments have been developed, including various medications, which relieve and help those who are dealing with it.