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.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/not-just-runners-adult-onset-lower-limb-dystonia/