Session Information
Date: Sunday, October 7, 2018
Session Title: Dystonia
Session Time: 1:45pm-3:15pm
Location: Hall 3FG
Objective: To describe a new cohort of adult onset, lower limb dystonia patients, comparing runners to non-runners.
Background: Adult onset lower limb dystonia is an unusual adult-onset dystonia, described in only a few published papers. In this report, we present a new cohort of 12 patients seen at our institution.
Methods: Data were extracted from the NIH Human Motor Control Section database. Unpaired t-tests and Fisher’s exact tests were used for comparisons.
Results: Our cohort includes 8 women and 4 men with a mean age of symptom onset of 56 years (range 47-61). Symptoms arose a mean of 2 years prior to diagnosis. Most (11/12) were right-handed, while 8/12 had the left leg affected. 7/12 were long-distance runners, including 5 marathon runners. 3 had had an injury preceding the onset of symptoms. 2 had sensory tricks: touching the thigh in one patient and putting a hand in a pocket in the other, that briefly improved dystonic posturing. Two patients had a family history of dystonia; 2 others had family members with tremor. Comparing runners to non-runners there was a trend for runners to be to be male; there were no men in the non-runner group. There were no differences in the rate of injury between the 2 groups, focality of the dystonia, or utility of sensory tricks. Runners were significantly younger at the age of dystonia onset: 53.9+/-1.5 (runners) v 58.8+/-0.8 (nonrunners)(p<0.03) Both cohorts had low BMIs (mean BMI for all patients = 21.7, which was not significantly different between runners (21+/-0.5) and nonrunners (22+/-2.0)( p=0.55).
Conclusions: This cohort highlights some new observations. Lower limb dystonia in long-distance runners tends to affect men and occur at an earlier age of onset compared to non-runners. Both runners and non-runners have BMI’s lower than the general US population and have the left leg affected more frequently than the right, regardless of hand dominance.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
B. Karp, D. Ehrlich, K. Alter. Not just runners: Adult onset lower limb dystonia [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2018; 33 (suppl 2). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/not-just-runners-adult-onset-lower-limb-dystonia/. Accessed October 12, 2024.« Back to 2018 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/not-just-runners-adult-onset-lower-limb-dystonia/