Anticholinergic Agents Can Induce Oromandibular Dyskinesia

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Oromandibular dyskinesia (OMD) can occur spontaneously or they can be induced by the conventional dopamine receptor antagonists. Anticholinergic medications have rarely been reported to cause OMD in parkinsonian or non-parkinsonian patients. METHODS We analyzed the clinical features of two parkinsonian and one non-parkinsonian patients who experienced OMD after anticholinergic medication. RESULTS Each patient of our cases developed oromandibular symptoms in the temporal regions that were related to the addition of anticholinergic agents, and the symptoms were relieved following the discontinuation of the causative anticholinergic drugs. In one of our case, levodopa alone did not cause dyskinesia but augmented dyskinesia associated with anticholinergics. CONCLUSIONS Here we report two parkinsonian and one non-parkinsonian patients with OMD induced by the use of anticholinergic agents. In our cases, we could not find any other precipitating or actual secondary causes for the OMD symptoms in our patients. Furthermore, the fact that the OMD in our cases were ameliorated with cessation of anticholinergics suggests that it may be anticholinergic-induced.