The Prevalence of Fibromyalgia in Patients with Restless Legs Syndrome

Nesrin Helvacı Yılmaz; Emir Cantürk; Özge Arıcı Düz; Bilge Parlakoğlu; Burcu Polat; Engin Çakar; Sema Demirci; Ahmet Mithat Tavlı; Didem Taşkın; Ayşe Pınar Doğru; Lütfü Hanoğlu; Fahriye Feriha Özer

doi:10.4274/tnd.04764

Nesrin Helvacı Yılmaz¹, Emir Cantürk², Özge Arıcı Düz¹, Bilge Parlakoğlu³, Burcu Polat¹, Engin Çakar⁴, Sema Demirci¹, Ahmet Mithat Tavlı¹, Didem Taşkın¹, Ayşe Pınar Doğru³, Lütfü Hanoğlu¹, Fahriye Feriha Özer¹

¹Department of Neurology, Istanbul Medipol University, Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul
²Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Istanbul Medipol University, Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul
³Department of Pschiatry, Istanbul Medipol University, Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul
⁴Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Istanbul Medipol University, Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul

Keywords: Fibromyalgia, Restless legs syndrome, Short form-36

Abstract

Objective: To determine the prevalence of fibromyalgia (FM) in patients with Restless legs syndrome (RLS), and to evaluate the relationship of FM and the scales of quality of life.

Materials and Methods: Thirty patients aged between 18-65 years (20 females, 10 males) with RLS and 30 healthy control subjects (17 female, 13 male) participated in our study. The patients were assessed using the the RLS Severity Rating Scale. The Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Questionnaire, and Quality of Life Short form-36 (SF-36) were given to both the patient and control group. The American College of Rheumatology criteria were used to diagnose FM.

Results: The average age of the patients was 44.73±11.23 years, the average age of the control group was 46.00±12.23 years. The prevalence of FM was 36.7% in the patient group and 6.7% in the control group (p=0.01). PSQI, depression and anxiety scores were significantly worse in the patient group (p=0.0001; p=0.004; p=0.000). The patients with RLS had higher scores of mental health, social functioning, pain, and general perception of SF-36, and scale for the evaluation of quality of life (p=0.004; p=0.023; p<0.001; p=0.001; p=0.13); the scores for physical and emotional limitations did not differ between the patient and the control group. However, if a patient with RLS had additional FM symptoms, the general perception scores of the body were worse (p=0.029). When we compared the scores of the patients with both RLS and FM with the healthy group, the anxiety scores were the most increased (three times).

Conclusion: The prevelance of FM was frequent (36.67%) in patients with moderate and severe RLS. RLS impairs quality of life. However, coexistence of the two diseases only worsened patients’ assessments of their own health score, and affected their anxiety scores the most.