Objective: The aim is to study the prevalence of sleep disorders symptoms in patients with essential tremor (ET).

Background: ET is the most common movement disorders in adults, the worldwide prevalence is 1% in general population and, 5% in population older than 60 years.¹
In the last years, it has been identified that ET is not only a monosymptomatic entity, but this concept has been replaced by a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a wide spectrum of motor and non-motor symptoms, including cognitive and psychiatric manifestations.²

Method: A prospective descriptive study with patients attending the movement disorders clinic at the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Mexico City was carried out.
Patients with essential tremor were enrolled during routine clinical visits, and they were assessed with Mayo Sleep Questionnaire-Informant questionnaire (MSQ), which is a 16-item measure that includes questions about rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD), periodic limb movements during sleep (PLMS), restless legs syndrome (RLS), sleepwalking (SW), obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), sleep related leg cramps (SRLC). Descriptive statistics were used to compute means, medians, standard deviations, and frequencies. Significance of associations was tested using T-test and Man-Whitney test. A p <.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: 28 patients with essential tremor completed the MSQ. The mean age was 75 ± 27.45, 14 were women and 12 were men.
The prevalence of sleep disorders symptoms evaluated with the Mayo sleep questionnaire was 79.16% (N=19). The most common symptoms being those associated with OSA in 58.33% (N=14), the second frequency is the symptoms associated with RBD in 33.33% (N=8).

Conclusion: Essential tremor is a neurodegenerative disease, the presence of motor and non-motor clinical manifestations has been evidenced during its evolution.
In this study, the prevalence of symptoms associated with sleep disorders was evaluated using the MSQ, which is a practical, inexpensive and screening tool, finding that the most frequent symptoms are associated with OSA and followed by RBD, these data should be corroborated with polysomnography. We consider that one of the disadvantages of the MSQ is that it does not evaluate the symptoms associated with insomnia. However, none of these symptoms correlate with the severity of motor symptoms or the quality of life of patients with ET.

References: References
1. Louis ED, Ferreira JJ. How common is the most common adult movement disorder? Update on the worldwide prevalence of essential tremor. Mov Disord. 2010;25(5):534–41.
2. Louis ED. Essential Tremor. A Family of Neurodegenerative Disorders?. Arch Neurol. 2009;66(10):1202-1208
3. Chandran V, Pal PK, Reddy JYC, Thennarasu K, Yadav R, Shivashankar N. Non-motor features in essential tremor. Acta Neurol Scand. 2012;125(5):332–7.
4. Louis ED. Essential tremor. Lancet Neurol. 2005;4(2):100–10.
5. Shanker V. Essential tremor: Diagnosis and management. BMJ. 2019;366.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/prevalence-of-sleep-disorders-symptoms-in-essential-tremor/