Tetrabenazine

Tetrabenazine is a drug for the symptomatical treatment of hyperkinetic movement disorder and is marketed under the trade names Nitoman® in Canada and Xenazine® in New Zealand and some parts of Europe, and is also available in the USA as an orphan drug. On December 6, 2007 an advisory committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted unanimously to recommend the approval of tetrabenazine, which would be the first drug approved in the United States to treat chorea associated with Huntington disease (HD). The compound has been known since the 1950s. Tetrabenazine works mainly as a VMAT-inhibitor[1] and as such promotes the early metabolic degradation of the neurotransmitter dopamine.