Exploring the Unmet Need for FDA-Approved Therapies in Stuttering: Gerald McGuire, MD

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"We need something that’s FDA approved, we need more evidence-based care for people who stutter, and we need to work together in an interdisciplinary model to meet this long-ignored need."

Around 1% of the world’s population persistently stutters as adults, but roughly 5-10% of all children go through a period of stuttering during speech/language development. There are many causes of stuttering, including genetics, neurochemistry, and neurological differences in brain networks for speech timing, motor control, and auditory feedback.

The Stuttering Treatment & Research Society (STARS) is a nonprofit organization focused on advancing neuroscience-based research and comprehensive testing methods for stuttering. Their goals include uncovering neurological causes for stuttering, increasing awareness globally, and improving treatment access and clinician education, all while providing innovative treatment programs and support for new therapeutic modalities. The organization recently hosted its first annual meeting September 13^th, at The Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California.

During the meeting, Psych Times, a sister publication of NeurologyLive® caught up with Gerald McGuire, MD, founder of STARS, to discuss the current landscape of stuttering treatment, both its complexity and unmet needs. McGuire, who serves as a professor and chair of psychiatry and neuroscience at UC Riverside School of Medicine, emphasized evidence supporting dopamine antagonists as potential pharmacologic interventions, despite the lack of FDA-approved therapies, and noted promising but still experimental approaches like TMS. He also underscored the importance of combining pharmacologic efforts with speech therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy in an interdisciplinary model to better address stuttering.