41/2 year old begin facial tics: eye blinking

Dear Dr.
My 4 1/2 yr old recently( 1mth) began having some facial tics. Eye blinking, some repeative licking of lips.(this is a distinct change in her behavior !) Maybe a mth before had a series of 5 well child shots from the pediatrician. She does have asthma. I am a mental health therapist. I do also see she is active for her age and often impulsive. My concern is how can I get these facial tics to stop. Is this neurological?  It is bothering my child. What should I do? Is this posibly shot related? Ros!

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

The relationship between childhood immunizations and neurological problems is not clear at this point. There is some evidence that the preservative thimerosal, which has been used in some immunizations, is the cause of some neurological or neurointegrative problems. It is the thimerosal (nearly 50% mercury by weight), not the vaccine itself, that may be the culprit. But this relationship, particuarly relative to causation, has not been established. Hopefully the matter will, in the near future, be investigated with sufficient rigor to end the debate. One thing to check with your daughter's peditarician is whether the vaccines contained thimerosal as the preservative. Likely they did not, since in January, 2003, all the lots of vaccines containing thimerosal expired. Now vaccines are produced without thimerosal. There is nothing you can do to stop the tics - by definition they are involuntray movements. You should definitely call them to the attention of the pediatrician, and an evaluation by a pediatric neurologist may be recommended. Most such tics are the result of a benign condition called transient tic disorder, but you should not assume this is the case.

[ros04]

What other issues should be ruled out to assure the facial tics are only transient tic disorder.  I'm aware that often there is anxiety related; however, she is in pre-school and can't identify anything different at home or challenging in school.  Thanks for your insight otherwise :)

[Kelly12368]

A related discussion, Facial tics was started.