Objective: To investigate the prevalence of non- motor symptoms in patients with idiopathic isolated dystonia and their correlation with disease duration, motor symptoms severity and age.

Background: Dystonia is a movement disorder mainly characterized by disabling motor symptoms. Due to their severity, until recently, little attention was drawn to non- motor features, but several of these can be equally disabling. Therefore, there is a need for a more careful assessment of these symptoms.

Methods: This study was approved by the institutions’ review boards and all subjects provided informed consent. One hundred and thirty-eight patients over the age of 18, with the diagnosis of idiopathic isolated dystonia, according to the recent established criteria (1), were clinically evaluated through the project Brazilian Network for the Study of Dystonia at the participating movement disorders centers. Besides the physical examination, Fahn-Marsden rating scale, a questionnaire with 31 items regarding the presence of non- motor symptoms was applied. A non- motor symptom was considered present when the patient reported it for at least three times during the previous month. Symptoms were correlated with disease duration, motor severity and age using the Mann- Whitney U test (p < 0.05 was considered significant).

Results: The group consisted of 86 females and 52 males with a mean age of 47.43 years (19 to 84 y), and an average disease duration of 18.3 years (median 15.5 y). The four most prevalent categories of symptoms were: psychiatric N = 99 (71,7%) where anxiety was the most prevalent one (n= 88); pain N = 97 (70.3%), which was related to the dystonia site in 97.9% of the cases; sleep disorders N = 86 (62.3%) with sleep-onset insomnia being the most prevalent complaint N= 50; and cognitive disorders N= 68 (49.3%), where recalling difficulty was the most common complaint (N = 57). No correlation was observed between the presence of these symptoms and motor severity, disease duration or age (p> 0.05).

Conclusions: Non- motor symptoms are highly prevalent among dystonia patients, regardless disease duration, motor severity and age. It will be useful to develop and validate scales to assess these symptoms in a more systematic way, in order to better understand them and to provide better care. Acknowledgements: this work was funded by FAPESP grants # 2010/10206-0 and 2014-17128-2. Reference: 1. Albanese et al. Mov Disorders 2013; 28:863-873.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/the-prevalence-of-non-motor-symptoms-in-dystonia/