“KEEP your feet still, Geordie hinny/ Let’s be happy through the neet,” wrote the music-hall artist Joe Wilson in a song still sung on Tyneside.
It’s a sentiment shared by at least one million people in Britain who find that restless legs often drive their bonny dreams away.
Some get only a few hours’ sleep, interrupted by the irresistible urge to move their legs. Married couples are forced into separate beds, while sufferers spend their waking hours half asleep.
Restless legs syndrome (RLS) was first described in the 17th century, immortalised by Joe Wilson in the 19th but is still, in the 21st, the butt of unkind jokes and medical neglect.
Wayne Hening, a neurologist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, has published in the journal Sleep Medicine the results of a Europe-wide survey of the condition. Britain, it turns out, has legs more restless than any other European country.
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Questionnaires were distributed from doctors’ surgeries. The returns show that 5.6 per cent of British patients are sufferers, reporting at least twice-weekly episodes of restless legs with a moderate or severe impact on their quality of life.
Those who attend surgeries are sicker than the population as a whole, but other surveys have shown that about 2.3 per cent of British adults suffer symptoms serious enough to need treatment. That is just over a million people.
Dr Hening found that only about one quarter of sufferers had had the condition diagnosed. Treatments offered included those for gout and cramps, as well as painkillers, anti-inflammatory drugs and anxiolytics. None of these is much good, Dr Hening says.
There are some more effective treatments. In Germany, drugs normally used for Parkinson’s disease are often prescribed, and powerful painkillers such as morphine may be useful in severe cases.
Dr Hening says: “Even when diagnosed, Restless leg syndrome is often not appropriately treated.”
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Funds for the survey were provided by GlaxoSmithKline, which has a drug, Requip, in development for the condition. It is being considered for a licence by the US Food and Drug Administration.