Restless legs syndrome (RLS), Parkinson's disease, and sustained dopaminergic therapy for RLS

Abstract

The Swedish neurologist and surgeon Karl A. Ekbom described restless legs syndrome (RLS; see Table 1 for diagnostic criteria) in 1945 – therefore, RLS is often known as Ekboms’s disease [1]. However, the English physician Sir Thomas Willis may have described RLS as early as 1672 [2]. RLS is a movement disorder that is distinct from periodic limb movements during sleep (PLMS), which are abnormal, involuntary movements that occur mainly during sleep but occasionally during relaxed wakefulness. PLMS may accompany RLS, but PLMS occurs more commonly without RLS [3,4]. Diagnosis of PLMS usually requires polysomnography, whereas RLS remains a clinical diagnosis by definition [5]. RLS can be effectively treated by almost any medication that also treats Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this two-part paper we present new information on the clinical overlap of RLS and PD (Section 2) and review the use of sustained dopaminergic treatment as it applies to RLS (Section 3).