Why Does Histamine Injection Help Mice With Tics?

[AretnaP]

Can anybody figure this out? I'm interested in tourettes (I have it) but nobody here really talks about it much, maybe it's just too rare to worry about.

Tourette-like tics vanish in mice treated with histamine

 

[BigYellowLemon]

The scientists shut down activity of the tuberomammillary nucleus by either genetic silencing, or 'ablation' (AKA cut dat ***t up) leads to 'excessive grooming behavior', which they believe to be the mouse equivalent of human tics. Their reasoning for all this is that mutations have been found in those suffering from tourettes which lead to lowered production of histamine - mutations making the production of histamine from histidine much lower. This gives them some credence, at least this experiment isn't like SSRI research, where the forced swim test is claimed to be a good indicator of anti-depressant efficacy in humans.

In my opinion, tics themselves can come from many causes. For instance, tourettes tics are almost a form of super OCD, the person feels compelled to do it (I had this as a kid but not anymore, but it was low-key so I still had friends and wasn't thought of as the weird kid), or involuntary jerks/tics, which seem to be a corruption of the dopaminergic center (movement modules are not working correctly. I currently have this too).

For both kinds of tics, the cure seems to require a broad approach of trying everything. Magnesium, gluten free, ketogenic diet, cannabis, benzos, PFC dopamine. Just keep trying. Really no one has any clue what specifically is going on, especially on a case by vase basis.

Tics seem so idiosyncratic, and the histamine mutation isn't in all or even a large majority of the tics suffering population, so who knows.