Children Show Individual Night-to-Night Variability of Periodic Limb Movements in Sleep

Abstract

In this sample of children, considerable individual night-to-night variability of PLMS indexes was observed. This finding has important clinical relevance for the diagnosis of restless legs syndrome and PLMD and may have an impact on future studies that correlate individual PLMS severity with frequently associated symptoms, such as negative affect, fatigue, and inattention. Our data, however, also suggest that individual PLMS variability is random and not likely to skew the group-level analysis of treatment outcome studies.