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One Fourth of Patients With Restless Legs Syndrome Have Severe Symptoms: Presented at MDS

By Paula Moyer

ROME, ITALY -- June 18, 2004 -- Nearly 9% of the population may have restless legs syndrome (RLS), and of those, one quarter have symptoms that would be categorized as severe, according to findings presented here June 17th at the 8th International Congress of the Movement Disorder Society.

"Although we knew the prevalence in several Western countries to be between 5% and 15%, we had not studied its prevalence in France," said principal investigator Francois Tison, MD, consultant neurologist, neurology department, Hopital du Haut-Leveque, Pessac, France. "We also did not know the population-based severity and impact on quality of life."

Dr. Tison and coinvestigators wanted to estimate the annual prevalence and the severity of RLS in the French population 18 years or older. They conducted in-person interviews from January to June 2003. They employed a stratified sampling method based on age, sex, geographical living area, socioeconomic class and, for women, employment status. Subjects were defined as living with RLS when they met the criteria of the International RLS Study Group (IRLSSG).

The investigators obtained quality of life and quality of sleep data with the Short Form-36 questionnaire (SF-36) and the sleep component of the Medical Outcomes Study questionnaire (MOS-Sleep). They compared the responses of subjects who had had RLS within the last 12 months to those of 540 randomly selected controls. The investigators assessed severity with several criteria, including the RLS Rating Scale from the IRLSSG, which rates symptoms within the last 7 days and has a potential score from 0 to 40; symptoms in the upper limbs; frequency of symptoms; and the hour of onset of symptoms during the day.

Among the 10,263 participants, 870 were identified as living with RLS within the last 12 months. Twice as many men as women in the study lived with RLS. They were an average of 48.5 years old, and their symptoms had begun when they were an average of 35.2 years old.

Among those living with RLS, 24.7% had daily symptoms and 29.9% had weekly symptoms, while 34.6% and 10.8% had monthly and yearly symptoms, respectively.

Nearly half, 49.0%, reported symptom onset before 6 pm, 40.6% had symptoms between 6 pm and bedtime, and 10.4% had symptoms only at bedtime or during the night. On the RLS Rating Scale score, 40.2% had scores from 0 to 9, 34.9% had scores from 10 to 19, 19.4% had scores from 20 to 29, and 5.5% had scores from 30 to 40. Among those with RLS, 15.6% had symptoms in the upper limbs.

After the investigators adjusted for age and sex, all SF-36 dimensions and MOS-Sleep dimensions were significantly worse in the RLS population than in the control group, especially for those who had symptoms at least once a week (P <.001).


[Presentation title: Prevalence and Severity of Restless Legs Syndrome in France -- The "INSTANT Study." Abstract P1230]

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