Abstract
We report a cohort of 21 patients (12 females and nine males), with a mean
age of 42.4 years, who developed tremor after receiving fluoxetine at a mean
dose of 25.7 mg per day. The mean latency period for tremor appearance was
54.3 days. Severity was found to be mild. In all patients, tremor was postural,
with P<0.0005, compared to patients with rest tremor and
P<0.05 compared to action/intention-tremor patients. The frequency
range was 6–12 Hz/s. After fluoxetine was discontinued, tremor disappeared
in 10 patients after a mean latency period of 35.5 days. In the remaining 11
patients, tremor persisted up to the end of the observation period (a mean of
449 days). We believe that this tremor phenomenon is due to the involvement of
the red nucleus and the inferior olivary nucleus through their projections to
the thalamus and the spinal cord.
Author Keywords: Fluoxetine; Tremor; Red nucleus; Olivary
nucleus
*1
Presented in partial form at the IX Congress of the Ecuadorean Neurological
Society, Quito, Ecuador, 14–17 July 1999.
