Restless legs complaint in African-American and Caucasian hemodialysis patients

To compare the prevalence of Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) symptoms in older African-American and Caucasian chronic renal failure patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis (HD).

Few data are available about the prevalence of RLS in racial groups, although it has been suggested that the African-American population is at lower risk relative to the Caucasian population. Chronic renal failure patients on HD are known to be at increased risk for RLS.

In-person interviews with 308 chronic renal failure patients aged 60-87 living in Georgia being treated by in-center HD.

More Caucasian patients than African-American patients reported experiencing RLS symptoms during the past 6 months (68 vs. 48%; P=0.0006). In a logistic regression analysis, African-American patients' reduced risk of RLS complaint was independent of patients' age, gender, education, body mass index (BMI), months on dialysis, diabetes as primary diagnosis, presence of cardiovascular comorbidity, and average number of weekly hours of HD.

Our data suggested a lower prevalence of RLS among older African-American than among older Caucasian patients on chronic HD. Further study is needed to determine whether this difference also occurs in idiopathic RLS and/or at different ages. The possibility of systematic reporting differences related to race should also be considered.