Myoclonus highlights a symptom instead of diagnosis of a particular disease. It implies sudden and involuntary jerking of a specific muscle or group of various muscles.1 Myoclonus-based jerks or twitches usually take place due to sudden muscular contractions referred as positive myoclonus. Alternatively, it takes place due to muscular relaxation and hence, referred as negative myoclonus.
What Is The Best Medicine For Myoclonus?
Treatment to cure myoclonus focuses on different medicines to reduce the symptoms. For this common medicines include-
Tranquilizer As Clonazepam
Doctors consider Clonazepam tranquilizers as the first choice drugs to treat myoclonus.2 Especially the tranquilizer is helpful in treating specific types of action-based myoclonus. Doctors recommend increasing the clonazepam dosages gradually until the patient experiences any improvement or he/she has excessive side effects. Loss of coordination and drowsiness are the two major side effects associated with the mentioned tranquilizer drug. However, the side effects diminish with time when the patient develops a tolerance for the respective drug.
Drugs To Treat Epilepsy
Most of drugs used to cure myoclonus are also useful to treat epilepsy, like levetiracetam, primidone, and phenytoin and so on. Barbiturates are responsible to slow down the patient’s central nervous system and in turn, results in anti seizure or tranquilizing effects. Moreover, doctors categorize primidone, levetiracetam and phenytoin as antiepileptic drugs even though phenytoin causes liver failure or cause long-term and harmful effects in individuals suffering from PME.
Sodium Valproate
Sodium valproate acts as an alternative therapy to cure myoclonus and it is useful as alone or by combining with clonazepam.
5-HTP i.e. 5-Hydroxytryptophan
A few of the research studies have revealed that 5-HTP i.e. 5-Hydroxytryptophan doses i.e. serotonin building blocks result in improvement in patients with few specific types of action-based myoclonus problem. However, a few other studies have shown that 5-HTP therapy is relatively less effective in all individuals with myoclonus.
Myoclonic jerks take place in almost every way i.e. may take place in sequence or alone and by following a specific pattern or without any pattern. Even such jerks take place many times or in an infrequent way each time. Along with this, myoclonus takes place in response to any external event or whenever an individual attempts to make his/her body movement. Twitching in this case is uncontrollable by the patient experiencing it.
Myoclonus in its simple form comprises of a muscular twitch and relaxation, like for instance hiccups. If your myoclonus remains in simple form, it does not cause any difficulty. However, when it spreads widely, myoclonus involves shock-like and persistent contractions in a specific group of muscles.
In some of the cases, myoclonus starts in a specific region of your body but spreads to muscles belonging to other areas. Moreover, in severe cases, myoclonus distorts the body movements and limits the ability of an individual to talk, eat or walk. In such situations, myoclonus implies an underlying disorder in the nerves and human brain.1
Conclusion
Based on the complexity associated with myoclonus, doctors recommend for the application of multiple drugs to achieve effective treatment. Even though a few of the mentioned drugs have limited positive effects while using individually, they have excellent effect while used with drugs acting on different mechanisms or pathways in the human brain. Therefore, based on the combination of multiple drugs, scientists may expect to achieve improved control on myoclonus symptoms.
Also Read:
