There have been few quality of life (QoL) studies of patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS) in Asian countries. We studied the QoL of patients with RLS and compared it to normal controls and patients with hypertension, type 2 diabetes, or osteoarthritis in Korea.
A total of 215 RLS patients (141 female; mean age 51.7 ± 13.5) were enrolled. All patients completed the questionnaires, including all the Korean versions of SF-36, RLS QoL, the International RLS Severity scale (IRLS), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and the Beck Depression Inventory-2 (BDI-2). These results were compared with the scores from normal controls (N=214) and from patients with hypertension (196), uncomplicated type 2 diabetes (185), or osteoarthritis of the knee (177).
The SF-36 QoL in patients with RLS was lower than that of the normal controls, and even lower than patients with hypertension or diabetes, but higher than those with osteoarthritis. The SF-36 Qol of RLS patients showed a significantly negative correlation with the severity of RLS symptoms(r=-0.430, p<0.001) and the severity of depression (r=-0.565, p<0.001), but was not significantly related to gender, age, or age-of-symptom onset (early or late-onset). Step-wise multiple regression identified three factors related to SF-36 QoL: depression (46.5% of RLS had responses on BDI-2 indicating depression) (β=-.899, p<0.001), RLS symptom severity (K-IRLS) (β=-.718, p<0.001), and gender (female) (β=-6.128, p=0.007).
These findings show that RLS has a considerable impact on the QoL of Koreans, which is comparable with studies of western countries. The QoL impairment relates to the degree of depression with RLS for Koreans.