Researchers test drugs for stuttering

Neurologist Roger Kurlan is leading a pilot research study of 25 people who stutter to see whether the drug olanzapine can help them speak more fluently. The drug, manufactured and sold by Eli Lilly and Company under the brand name Zyprexa, was approved last year and is used to treat psychiatric disorders. Unlike older, similar medications that showed some effectiveness against stuttering, olanzapine does not cause side effects like drowsiness and depression.

"If you dig out the old literature about stuttering, you'll find that there were many studies that indicated that certain drugs known as neuroleptics were effective in treating stuttering," Kurlan said. "But they were pretty much abandoned in the early 1970s because they had too many side effects. Now we have better drugs with fewer side effects."

Kurlan, an expert on Tourette's syndrome, became interested in stuttering when he noticed similarities between the disorders. These include tics like eye-blinking and a tendency toward obsessive-compulsive behavior and attention-deficit disorder. Around the same time, speech therapist Enid Hymes also noticed symptoms of Tourette's in patients she was treating for stuttering. The two began exchanging patients.

"The groups looked exactly the same--we were looking at the same symptoms from two different viewpoints," Kurlan said. "The clinical picture for stutterers is almost identical to Tourette's."

The team says the drugs doctors use to treat Tourette's symptoms, known as neuroleptics, might also ease stuttering. These drugs target dopamine, the chemical system in the brain that is involved in Tourette's and other movement disorders like Parkinson's disease.

Many neurologists think that the difficulty Parkinson's patients have in walking and initiating movement parallels the difficulty stutterers have speaking. Nevertheless, most stutterers see speech therapists, not neurologists, about the condition.

While up to 15 percent of children stutter, the percentage falls off dramatically as children age. Even so, for nearly five percent of the population, stuttering persists throughout life and can be a serious problem. Speech therapy helps, but its benefits usually end when treatment ends.

In this study each patient will receive olanzapine for six weeks and a placebo for six weeks. A two-week interval will separate the two periods, and neither the health care team nor the patient will know until the study is completed which pill was used during which period. Patients will visit Strong six times to be seen by a speech therapist and a neurologist.

The study, for adults between the ages of 18 and 50, is funded by Eli Lilly, maker of the drug. The research team includes Kurlan, Hymes, and Kathy Jones, professor of speech pathology at SUNY College at Geneseo.