A 57-year-old woman restarted a widely prescribed antidepressant for her anxiety and, within days, began producing loud involuntary sounds she could not stop, including throat clearing and noises her doctors compared to a horse neighing.
Psychiatrists at King Saud University Medical City in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, published the case this year in Frontiers in Psychiatry. To their knowledge, they write, it is the first reported instance of vocal tics linked to venlafaxine, a serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor prescribed worldwide for depression and generalized anxiety disorder.
