Restless Sleep Disorder (RSD) is a newly defined sleep disorder in children (age 6-18). Restless sleep in children is a common compliant in clinical practice, however the clinical diagnosis of RSD is based on both subjective and objective findings.
Parasomnias as a broad sleep disorder are broken into two groups; Non-REM and REM. Some of these parasomnias are more common in children than adults (eg sleepwalking or somnambulism), some are not.
Senel et al. recently published a study in the Journal of Sleep that looked at the prevalence of RSD in children with NREM parasomnias. They found that 28.6% of children with NREM parasomnias had RSD, which is interesting because 0% had RSD in their control group. They also noted that sleep quality was worse in children with both NREM parasomnia and RSD.
The significance of this study is not yet clear, but the findings are interesting nonetheless.
References:
Gulcin Benbir Senel, Esra Kochan Kizilkilic, Derya Karadeniz, Restless Sleep Disorder in children with NREM Parasomnias, Sleep, 2021;, zsab049, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsab049
RSD diagnostic criteria:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945720303671
