The condition that many think is common among all TS sufferers coprolalia, an involuntary outburst of some type of obscenity or vulgarity is actually quite rare, occurring in only 10 to 15 percent of patients. Coprolalia is extremely random in occurrence and usually out of context with the current conversation. A similar motor condition, copropraxia, causes sufferers to randomly exhibit obscene gestures. Copropraxia has a smaller percentage of occurrence than coprolalia. Echolalia is another vocal tic in which words that are heard are repeated intermittently until something else takes its place or the bout ends.
Occurrences are rare, but more often than coprolalia and to much different degrees.
Current literature regarding prognosis suggests that TS has a rule of thirds, Hiott said. In a third of patients, the tics subside and may disappear entirely. Another third, may exhibit the same tics, but in a much milder form. And the last third will continue to exhibit the same tics from childhood, with a percentage of these actually worsening. With the little that is known about TS, the treatments of the condition are limited.