Abstract
Study objectives
Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a frequent sleep disorder with a prevalence of 5 % to 15 % in Caucasion populations. Dopaminergic treatment is known to reduce sensorimotor RLS symptoms and is approved for RLS, but not all patients ask for treatment. About 2 % to 3 % of patients presenting to a primary care physician require RLS-specific treatment. The overall treatment preference of RLS sufferers, however, is still unknown. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and treatment preference in patients with previously diagnosed and those with yet undiagnosed RLS in a population-based survey in Germany.
Design and setting
Cross-sectional health survey with face-to-face interviews with 1312 participants in the Dortmund Health Study. RLS was assessed with standardized, validated questions addressing the four minimal diagnostic criteria for RLS defined by the International Restless Legs Syndrome Study Group.
Participants
Participants were aged 25 to 75 years and were randomly selected from the city register.
Results
The overall prevalence of individuals with a known doctor diagnosis of RLS was 2.3 %. In addition, 6.5 % fulfilled the four minimal criteria but did not know about this diagnosis yielding an overall prevalence of 8.8 %. Prevalence was higher in women (10.2 %) and German descendents (9.2 %) compared to men (7.1 %) and migrants (6.7 %). Almost 60 % of all RLS cases reported symptoms at least once a week. 33.3 % of cases with a known RLS diagnosis and 14.1 % with an unknown diagnosis had an RLS treatment wish. The latter is determined by knowledge of the diagnosis, daily symptoms, diabetes and sleep disturbance.
Conclusion
About every fourth RLS case knows about the diagnosis and overall every fifth RLS case wishes medication to effectively reduce symptoms, corresponding to 1.6 % of the whole study population.
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Disclosure: The Dortmund Health Study was supported by the German Migraine & Headache Society and by unrestricted grants of equal share from Almirall, Astra Zeneca, Berlin Chemie, Boehringer, Boots Health Care, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Janssen Cilag, McNeil Pharma, MSD Sharp & Dohme and Pfizer to the University of Muenster. Klaus Berger, MD, MPH, had full access to the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0 ), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Happe, S., Vennemann, M., Evers, S. et al. Treatment wish of individuals with known and unknown restless legs syndrome in the community. J Neurol 255, 1365–1371 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-008-0922-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-008-0922-7