Prevalence and clinical characteristics of restless legs syndrome in Japanese patients with Parkinson's disease

✍ Scribed by Zbigniew K. Wszolek; Laura A. Brown

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 103 KB
• Volume: 22
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-3185
• DOI: 10.1002/mds.21212

✦ Synopsis

We read with interest the recent report by Nomura and colleagues. 1 Their study provided extensive data on the prevalence and clinical characteristics of restless legs syndrome (RLS) in Japanese patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). They found 20 PD patients who also had a diagnosis of RLS, but only 2 of them (10%) had a positive family history of RLS.

We reviewed the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville computerized clinical database for patients with diagnoses of PD and RLS from 1 January 2005 to 30 April 2006. We found 25 Caucasian patients diagnosed as having both PD and RLS, 8 (32%) of whom reported a positive family history of RLS. We also follow a 125-member Caucasian kindred with Parkinsonism, essential tremor (ET), and RLS. Of the 22 affected members in this kindred, 6 have been diagnosed as having PD alone, 4 have ET alone, 6 have RLS alone, 4 have both PD and ET, and 2 have both PD and RLS. 2 Therefore, we believe that the suggestion by Nomura and colleagues 1 that "RLS in PD patients does not occur on a genetic basis" may not be accurate for the Caucasian population.