Cerebral 5-HT2A receptor binding is increased in patients with Tourette's syndrome

Experimental and clinical data have suggested that abnormalities in the serotonergic neurotransmissions in frontal-subcortical circuits are involved in Tourette's syndrome. To test the hypothesis that the brain's 5-HT2A receptor binding is increased in patients with Tourette's syndrome, PET imaging was performed.

Twenty adults with Tourette's syndrome and 20 healthy control subjects were investigated with PET-[18F]altanserin using a bolus-infusion protocol. Regions of interest were delineated automatically on co-registered MRI images, and partial volume-corrected binding parameters were extracted from the PET images.

Comparison between control subjects and Tourette's syndrome patients showed increased specific [18F]altanserin binding, not only in the a-priori selected brain regions hypothesized to be involved in Tourette's syndrome, but also post-hoc analysis showed a global up-regulation when testing for a overall difference with a randomization test (p