ArticlePloS one2014
Effects of alprazolam on cortical activity and tremors in patients with essential tremor.
Article in PloS one, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Alprazolam for essential tremor.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2015Pooled it
- Only the Fastest Corticospinal Fibers Contribute to β Corticomuscular Coherence.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- Effects of Deep Dry Needling on Tremor Severity and Functionality in Stroke: A Case Report.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Anti-Tremor Action of Subtype Selective Positive Allosteric Modulators of GABACerebellum (London, England) · 2020Article
- Current and Future Neuropharmacological Options for the Treatment of Essential Tremor.Current neuropharmacology · 2020Review
- Graph theory analysis of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging in essential tremor.Human brain mapping · 2019Article
- Personalised profiling to identify clinically relevant changes in tremor due to multiple sclerosis.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2019Article
- Essential tremor severity and anatomical changes in brain areas controlling movement sequencing.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2019Article
- Motor Unit-Driven Identification of Pathological Tremor in Electroencephalograms.Frontiers in neurology · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEssential tremor (ET) is characterised by postural and action tremors with a frequency of 4-12 Hz. Previous studies suggest that the tremor activity originates in the cerebello-thalamocortical pathways. Alprazolam is a short-acting benzodiazepine that attenuates tremors in ET. The mechanisms that mediate the therapeutic action of alprazolam are unknown; however, in healthy subjects, benzodiazepines increase cortical beta activity. In this study, we investigated the effect of alprazolam both on beta and tremor-related cortical activity and on alterations in tremor presentation in ET patients. Therefore, we characterised the dynamics of tremor and cortical activity in ET patients after alprazolam intake.
methodsWe recorded hand tremors and contralateral cortical activity in four recordings before and after a single dose of alprazolam. We then computed the changes in tremors, cortico-muscular coherence, and cortical activity at the tremor frequency and in the beta band.
resultsAlprazolam significantly attenuated tremors (EMG: 76.2 ± 22.68%), decreased cortical activity in the tremor frequency range and increased cortical beta activity in all patients (P<0.05). At the same time, the cortico-muscular coherence at the tremor frequency became non-significant (P<0.05). We also found a significant correlation (r = 0.757, P<0.001) between the reduction in tremor severity and the increased ratio of cortical activity in the beta band to the activity observed in the tremor frequency range.
conclusionsThis study provides the first quantitative analysis of tremor reduction following alprazolam intake. We observed that the tremor severity decreased in association with an increased ratio of beta to tremor-related cortical activity. We hypothesise that the increase in cortical beta activity may act as a blocking mechanism and may dampen the pathological oscillatory activity, which in turn attenuates the observed tremor.
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