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. 2022 Aug 25:13:961136.
doi: 10.3389/fneur.2022.961136. eCollection 2022.

Polysomnographic nighttime features of Restless Legs Syndrome: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Chaofan Geng  1 , Zhenzhen Yang  2 , Tingting Zhang  1 , Pengfei Xu  1 , Hongju Zhang  1   3
Affiliations

Polysomnographic nighttime features of Restless Legs Syndrome: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Chaofan Geng et al. Front Neurol. .

Abstract

Background: Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) is a common sleep disorder. Polysomnographic (PSG) studies have been used to explore the night sleep characteristics of RLS, but their relationship with RLS has not been fully analyzed and researched.

Methods: We searched the Cochrane Library electronic literature, PubMed, and EMBASE databases to identify research literature comparing the differences in polysomnography between patients with RLS and healthy controls (HCs).

Results: This review identified 26 studies for meta-analysis. Our research found that the rapid eye movement sleep (REM)%, sleep efficiency (SE)%, total sleep time (TST) min, and N2 were significantly decreased in patients with RLS compared with HCs, while sleep latency (SL) min, stage shifts (SS), awakenings number (AWN), wake time after sleep onset (WASO) min, N1%, rapid eye movement sleep latency (REML), and arousal index (AI) were significantly increased. Additionally, there was no significant difference among N3%, slow wave sleep (SWS)%, and apnea-hypopnea index (AHI).

Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated that architecture and sleep continuity had been disturbed in patients with RLS, which further illustrates the changes in sleep structure in patients with RLS. In addition, further attention to the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of RLS and its association with neurodegenerative diseases is needed in future studies.

Keywords: Polysomnographic; Restless Legs Syndrome; meta-analysis; pathophysiology; sleep.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

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Figure 1
Flow diagram of the studies selection.
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