Deutetrabenazine is Beneficial for Long-Term Tardive Dyskinesia Treatment

Deutetrabenazine may provide long-term treatment benefits to patients with tardive dyskinesia (TD), according to a post hoc analysis presented in a poster at Psych Congress 2021 in San Antonio, Texas. The findings show that deutetrabenazine may not interfere with treatments for other underlying psychiatric disorders.

TD, an involuntary movement disorder, can result from exposure to dopamine-receptor antagonists (DRAs). Deutetrabenazine is a vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2) inhibitor approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat both chorea associated with Huntington’s disease and TD in adults.

In 2 pivotal, 12-week, phase 3 clinical trials deutetrabenazine was associated with clinically significant improvements in abnormal involuntary movement scale (AIMS) scores compared with placebo. The treatment displayed a favorable safety profile. Patients from these 2 studies were automatically enrolled in a 3-year open-label extension (OLE) study that found long-term deutetrabenazine treatment was well-tolerated and associated with sustained improvement in AIMS score.

In this post hoc analysis, Robert A Hauser, MD, director of the Signature Interdisciplinary Clinical Research program in Neuroscience, University of South Florida, Tampa, et al aimed “to assess the long-term efficacy and safety of deutetrabenazine in patients with TD by baseline DRA use.”

Individual Titration of Deutetrabenazine Beneficial for Patients With Tardive Dyskinesia

This analysis assessed 3 efficacy outcomes in subgroups by baseline DRA use, including:

• Change from baseline in AIMS score.

• Percentage of patients achieving ≥50% improvement in AIMS score.
• Percentage of patients with clinical global impression of change (CGIC) and patient global impression of change (PGIC) treatment success.

Of 337 participants in the OLE study, at baseline, 254 patients were taking DRAs and 83 were not taking DRAs.

The mean age of participants taking DRAs was 56-years old and the mean duration of time since being diagnosed with TD was 6 years. The mean age of participants not taking DRAs was 60-years old, and the mean duration of time since being diagnosed with TD was 4.9 years. Both groups had a mean of 397+ days of treatment.

At week 145, ≥50% AIMS responses was achieved by 66% of patients taking DRAs and 68% of patients not taking DRAs. At this endpoint, patients also achieved clinical global impression of change (CGIC) treatment success with 64% for the group taking DRAs and 62% for the group not taking DRAs.

“These results suggest that deutetrabenazine treatment may provide long-term benefits to patients with TD without interfering with treatments for other underlying psychiatric disorders,” researchers concluded in the poster. “[This treatment] is beneficial, with a favorable safety profile, regardless of concomitant DRA use.”

Reference

Hauser R A, Barkay H, Fernandez H, et al. Long-term efficacy and safety of deutretrabenazine in patients with tardive dyskinesia by concomitant dopamine-receptor antagonist use. Poster presented at: Psych Congress; October 29-November 1, 2021.