The Myth of Elevated Serum Creatine Phosphokinase Level and Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome

The 1980s witnessed the honeymoon between American psychiatry and an enigmatic and mysterious drug complication called neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS). I fear that the 1990s are witnessing the same in British psychiatry. Gone is the era when case reports in British literature described the syndrome without identifying it by name (Allan & White, 1972; Moyes, 1973), ostensibly owing to lack of awareness. Probably, no one had bothered to read the original description in the French-language literature (Delay et al, 1960). The pendulum has now swung to the other extreme. Every known drug-related complication is being labelled NMS. In the US, Addonizio et al (1986) suggested a ridiculously high incidence figure of 12.2%. The same trend for overdiagnosis is seen in the recent case report by Dalkin & Lee (1990). The authors of this case report seem to have forgotten that NMS is an idiosyncratic adverse drug reaction which is dose-independent. There is no reason to label every neuroleptic overdose as NMS on grounds of raised creatine phosphokinase (CPK) level.