Parasomnias and isolated sleep symptoms in Parkinson's disease: A questionnaire study on 661 patients

Background: Sleep disorders are among the most common non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease. Method: The prevalence of parasomnias and their association with other symptoms were studied in a questionnaire study among 1447 randomly selected Parkinson patients, aged 43 to 89 years. The response rate was 59.0% and of these 77% had answered to all questions that were used in the analyses (N = 661). Results: The prevalence of REM sleep behavior disorder (RED) evaluated by the RBDSQ >= 6 was 39.0%. The occurrences of other parasomnias (>= 1/week) in patients with PD were: nightmares 17.2%, night terrors 3.9%, s leepwalking 1.8%, enuresis 21.0%, and hallucinations 153%. Occurrences >= 1/week) of the isolated sleep symptoms were: nocturnal sweating 28.8%, bruxism4.7%, and sleep talking 21.7%. Association of RBD with sleepwalking (parasomnia overlap disorder) was found in 1.7% of all PD patients. Adjusted logistic regression analysis showed that weekly nightmares (OR 12.5; 95% CI 53 to 29.7), hallucinations (OR 5.1; 2.1 to 12.4), sleep talking (OR 11.6; 5.9 to 22.8), male gender (OR 1.9; 1.1 to 3.1), and restless legs syndrome (OR 4.7; 1.7 to 13.2) associated with the presence of RED. Conclusion: Parkinson patients with RED have often also other parasomnias and/or isolated sleep symptoms. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.