Restless legs syndrome tends to run in families

Restless legs syndrome tends to run in families, and the siblings of those who are severely affected seem to have a greater risk of developing the disease, says a new report.

Restless legs syndrome is characterised by an irresistible desire to shake legs. Some previous studies have suggested that the condition clusters in families.

"However, there has been a lack of large-scale systematic family studies and of full descriptions of the clinical features of familial restless legs syndrome," study authors write.

Lan Xiong of the Research Centre of the University of Montreal Hospital Centre, Canada, and colleagues studied 671 individuals who satisfied the criteria for restless legs syndrome.

This included 192 individuals who were assessed at a specialised sleep centre and 479 affected family members who responded to a structured questionnaire telephone diagnostic interview.

The condition appeared to aggregate in families, with a familial rate of 77 percent, the authors note. Siblings of an individual with the condition were about 3.6 times more likely to have the disease than those without an affected sibling, and offspring of parents with the condition had 1.8 times the risk.

"Familial restless legs syndrome is a chronic disorder with a mean (average) disease duration of 24 years and a wide range of age of onset (average 28 years), with most family members having early-onset disease but mild to moderate restless legs syndrome symptoms," the authors write.

"Our clinical data also indicated that familial restless legs syndrome is more prominent among women who also had increased incidence of anaemia/iron deficiency, arthritis and number of pregnancies."

Aggregation of disease in families could be due to genetic influences, environmental effects or the combination of both, the authors note, says a University of Montreal release.

These findings were published in the May issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.