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Augmentation in restless legs syndrome patients in Korea

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Abstract

Purpose

Augmentation has been known as the major complication of long-term dopaminergic treatment of restless legs syndrome (RLS). However, there have been no reports on the prevalence of augmentation in Korea. Thus, we aimed to assess the rate of augmentation and evaluate related factors in Korean RLS patients.

Methods

Ninety-four idiopathic RLS patients who have been treated over a period of at least 6 months were enrolled. Thirty subjects were treated with a dopamine agonist only, and 64 were treated with a dopamine agonist and alpha two delta ligands. We assessed the clinical characteristics of those RLS subjects and evaluated the rate of augmentation. Augmentation was assessed using the NIH criteria for augmentation by two RLS experts independently.

Results

Eleven subjects (11.7 %) were classified as having definitive or highly suggestive clinical indication of augmentation. In comparing the augmentation group with the non-augmentation group, there were no significant differences of baseline clinical characteristics. Four (13.3 %) of the dopamine agonists monotherapy group and seven (10.9 %) of the combination therapy group were categorized as augmentation. There was no significant difference in the augmentation rate between these two groups.

Conclusions

We found an 11.7 % augmentation rate in Korean RLS subjects. There was no difference in the rate of RLS augmentation between the dopaminergic monotherapy group and the combined treatment group. It may be related with using a similar dosage of dopaminergic drugs.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korean Government (MSIP) (No. 2014R1A5A2010008).

Conflicts of interest

This was not an industry supported study, and there were no financial conflicts of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Dongsan Medical Center, Keimyung University School of Medicine, 56 Dalseong-ro, Jung-gu, Daegu, 700-712, Korea

    Ji-Ye Jeon, Hye-Jin Moon & Yong Won Cho

  2. Department of Nursing Graduate School, Keimyung University School, Daegu, South Korea

    Mei Ling Song

  3. Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Heaven, CT, USA

    Hochang B. Lee

Authors
  1. Ji-Ye Jeon
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  2. Hye-Jin Moon
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  3. Mei Ling Song
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  4. Hochang B. Lee
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  5. Yong Won Cho
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yong Won Cho.

Additional information

Ji-Ye Jeon and Hye-Jin Moon are co-first authors and contributed equally to this work.

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Jeon, JY., Moon, HJ., Song, M.L. et al. Augmentation in restless legs syndrome patients in Korea. Sleep Breath 19, 523–529 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-014-1041-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-014-1041-6

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