Siblings Of RSD/CRPS Patients More Prone At Younger Age Due To Genetic Factors
RSD/CRPS patients may be at risk of additional complications and accelerating their pain condition, if there is a familial history of RSD/CRPS.
To evaluate whether there were differences between the familial RSD/CRPS and sporadic forms of the syndrome, the clinical characteristics of RSD/CRPS burden of proof were first compared with those of sporadic RSD/CRPS patients from a Dutch population-based study. These patients may be considered representative of the more common type of RSD/CRPS since they were identified independent of referral. Compared to the sporadic RSD/CRPS patient group, patients with familial RSD/CRPS had a younger age at onset and more often experienced a spontaneous development of RSD/CRPS. Additionally, familial RSD/CRPS patients more frequently had multiple affected extremities and dystonia. . Dystonia seems to be related to a problem in the basal ganglia, which is the area of the brain that is responsible for initiating muscle contractions. The problem involves the way the nerve cells communicate and are classified by the body part they affect:
- Generalized dystonia affects most of or all of the body.
- Focal dystonia affects just a specific body part.
- Multifocal dystonia affects more than one unrelated body part.
- Segmental dystonia involves adjacent body parts.
- Hemidystonia affects the arm and leg on the same side of the body.
Compared to the sporadic RSD/CRPS patients, patients with familial RSD/CRPS were on an average 17 years younger at disease onset, more often had multiple affected extremities, and more often had dystonia.
Additionally familial RSD/CRPS more often had observed temperature asymmetry (lack of proportion between the parts of a thing in the lack of coordination of two parts acting in connection with one another), color asymmetry, as well as sweating and trophic disturbances. Plus the median time between onset of RSD/CRPS and examination was much larger for familial RSD/CRPS, which suggests that familial RSD/CRPS patients have a more severe phenotype (The observable physical and/or biochemical characteristics of the expression of a gene) than sporadic RSD/CRPS patients. All this may point at an increased genetic susceptibility to develop RSD/CRPS.
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