Drug-associated neuroleptic malignant syndrome

Neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) is an uncommon but serious and potentially fatal adverse drug effect caused by dopamine receptor blockade. The syndrome is most closely associated with use of typical, and less frequently atypical, antipsychotics, with an incidence rate of up to 1.4% in patients being treated with these drugs. However, other drugs acting as D2 receptor antagonists, such as antihistamines and antiemetics, can also cause the syndrome. Antidepressants, carbamazepine, and lithium (Konstantakopoulos et al., 2009; Patil et al., 2016) have sometimes been implicated as possible exacerbating factors.