tardive dyskinesia

[upbeat music] Hello, thanks for joining us for TD: The Whole Story, a podcast by NOTD, the National Organization for Tardive Dyskinesia.

I'm your host, Bill Cote.

Today, we will be discussing deep brain stimulation, or DBS, a treatment for TD that may be shrouded in mystery for those who have tardive dyskinesia.

Today, we are fortunate to have a distinguished neurologist and movement distorders, disorder specialist with us, Dr. Cherian Abraham Karappu-Pu-Pura, or Dr. K as he's often called.

And, uh, Dr. Cherian completed his training in adult neurology and movement disorders at the University of Texas Southwestern Dallas campus.

So anytime your brain decides to do a particular movement, the surface part of the brain feeds that information to the circuit board, the switchboard, and in a timely manner, you have switching on and switching off of your appropriate movements that need to happen.

For example, if I'm reaching my hand to my glasses right here, that particular sequence is a coordinated sequence of switching off and switching on.

This circuitry, when it gets damaged for various reasons, including Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, dystonia, tardive dyskinesia, what happens is there's a... an, a balance is shifted between either having too much excessive movements being accidentally switched on or too little movements happening.

Fair.

But he also says TD is a sad condition and a heavy price to pay, and he's always wondered how you can take a drug and end up with something irreversible.

What's the mechanism? And how much has the newer generation of antipsychotics actually reduced the incidence over prolonged treatment? So we're taking that seriously.

We're taking that seriously.

does real work.

which is exactly why it's worth doing properly.

TD is a potentially irreversible hyperkinetic movement disorder resulting from prolonged exposure to dopamine receptor blocking agents.

That's the definition.