Treatment of restless legs syndrome with gabapentin: A double-blind, cross-over study

To the Editor: In this case, one of the reasons given for testing gabapentin is because of “the side-effect profile . . . and the likelihood of long-term complications associated with dopaminergic drugs.” While there is no mention of side-effects for gabapentin in the abstract, and no single adverse event produced a statistically significant difference between the drug and placebo, a careful scrutiny of Table 2 suggests cause for concern. Six of the 23 cases (26%) reported malaise while taking gabapentin, compared with only two (8%) taking placebo. The tripling of the rate of a serious condition is a concern even though such a small sample size does not achieve statistical significance. Also, as other drugs have also been shown to be effective against restless legs syndrome (RLS) in randomized trials, perhaps new results could be published with size-of-effect statistics so that the relative effectiveness of different drugs can be gauged.

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