MS Patients at Higher Risk for Restless Legs Syndrome

But more study is needed to confirm the link, one expert said

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

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FRIDAY, June 27 (HealthDay News) -- People with multiple sclerosis are at a greater risk than the general population for developing restless legs syndrome (RLS), a new Italian study suggests.

"This is important, because RLS is one of the symptoms that can seriously affect an MS patient's quality of life, even more than a lot of other problems MS patients face," said lead researcher Dr. Giovanni Cossu, a neurologist at Brudzu Hospital in Cagliari, Italy. "Therapies for RLS [such as] dopamine agonists are normally very effective and can restore this quality of life, " he added.

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Cossu and his colleagues were expected to present their findings this week at the Movement Disorder Society's International Congress of Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders, in Chicago.

The authors delved into a possible association between MS and RLS by analyzing questionnaires completed by a little more than 200 Italian male and female MS patients throughout 2007, as well as a similar number of people without MS.

Those indicating symptoms of possible RLS were further examined by a neurologist.

According to the study, almost 15 percent of the MS patients were diagnosed with RLS, while less than 3 percent of those without MS had the syndrome.

Based on these results, MS patients run a significantly higher risk for RLS than the general population, the team concluded. They said MS should be "definitively" noted as being highly associated with RLS.

Cossu said that further research -- focused on crunching MRI and neurological data -- is ongoing in order to "better define the clinical profile of those MS patients who are also likely candidates for RLS."

However, Dr. John Richert, executive vice president of research and clinical programs with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, New York City, expressed some reservations about the findings.

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