Propranolol and Botulinum Toxin for Essential Vocal Tremor

Summary

Essential tremor is the most common adult-onset movement disorder, and essential voice tremor is the vocal manifestation of essential tremor. While nearly all essential tremor patients experience hand tremor, many also manifest head tremor and voice tremor. Essential voice tremor can lead to increased vocal effort, decreased intelligibility, and misconstrued emotional state. Only one medication, propranolol, is FDA-approved to treat essential tremor. Propranolol is not felt to be nearly as effective for axial tremors (head, trunk, neck) as it is for extremity tremors. However, this has not been studied with any objective assessment in a prospective way for EVT. For patients with essential voice tremor, the limited published data suggests that botulinum toxin has been shown to lead to functional voice improvement. Botulinum toxin, though also not well-studied with objective voice outcomes, is a commonly used clinical therapy for treatment of essential voice tremor. While it is used more often for essential voice tremor than propranolol therapy, botulinum toxin also has not been prospectively studied with validated, objective voice outcome measures. The investigators would like to determine if propranolol has any significant effect on vocal tremor. The investigators would also like to determine, in an objective way, the effect of botulinum toxin on vocal tremor. If effective, propranolol would provide an affordable and non-invasive alternative or addition to botulinum toxin injections for patients with essential voice tremor.

Timeline

Start

2014-05

Primary completion

2014-10

Completion

2014-11

Publications

• Background Sulica L, Louis ED. Clinical characteristics of essential voice tremor: a study of 34 cases. Laryngoscope. 2010 Mar;120(3):516-28. doi: 10.1002/lary.20702.
• Background Zesiewicz TA, Shaw JD, Allison KG, Staffetti JS, Okun MS, Sullivan KL. Update on treatment of essential tremor. Curr Treat Options Neurol. 2013 Aug;15(4):410-23. doi: 10.1007/s11940-013-0239-4.
• Background Gurey LE, Sinclair CF, Blitzer A. A new paradigm for the management of essential vocal tremor with botulinum toxin. Laryngoscope. 2013 Oct;123(10):2497-501. doi: 10.1002/lary.24073. Epub 2013 Apr 1.
• Background Adler CH, Bansberg SF, Hentz JG, Ramig LO, Buder EH, Witt K, Edwards BW, Krein-Jones K, Caviness JN. Botulinum toxin type A for treating voice tremor. Arch Neurol. 2004 Sep;61(9):1416-20. doi: 10.1001/archneur.61.9.1416.
• Background Hogikyan ND, Sethuraman G. Validation of an instrument to measure voice-related quality of life (V-RQOL). J Voice. 1999 Dec;13(4):557-69. doi: 10.1016/s0892-1997(99)80010-1.
• Background Troster AI, Pahwa R, Fields JA, Tanner CM, Lyons KE. Quality of life in Essential Tremor Questionnaire (QUEST): development and initial validation. Parkinsonism Relat Disord. 2005 Sep;11(6):367-73. doi: 10.1016/j.parkreldis.2005.05.009.

Drugs

Indications