Parkinsonism: Neuroleptic-Induced

   Parkinsonism is a movement disorder involving muscle rigidity, akinesia, and tremor first described in 1817 by the English physician James Parkinson (1755–1824) in his Essay on the Shaking Palsy. In 1954, two Swiss psychiatrists at different institutions noted simultaneously that the new antipsychotic drugs caused Parkinson-like movement disorders: Hans Steck (1891–1980), professor of psychiatry at the university clinic at Céry-Lausanne, called attention in the Annales médico-psychologiques to an "extrapyramidal syndrome," later also referred to as "extrapyramidal side effects," or EPS, in patients on chlorpromazine and serpasil. (See Reserpine). As well, Hans-Joachim Haase (1922–), then a staff psychiatrist at the mental hospital in Oberwil-Zug, reported in the Nervenarzt that chlorpromazine patients were developing a "Parkinsonian" syndrome. The symptoms of EPS are thought related to the blockade of the dopamine receptors in the basal ganglia, just as Parkinson’s disease itself is caused by a deficiency of dopamine. (See also Akathisia: neuroleptic-induced; Extrapyramidal Side Effects; Tardive Dyskinesia.)