Current Treatment Options for REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder

Abstract

The symptomatic treatment of REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) is very important to prevent sleep-related falls and/or injuries. Though clonazepam and melatonin are usually considered the first-line symptomatic therapy for RBD, their efficiency has not been proven by randomized clinical trials. The role of dopamine agonists in improving RBD symptoms is controversial, and rivastigmine, memantine, 5-hydroxytryptophan, and the herbal medicine yokukansan have shown some degree of efficacy in short- and medium-term randomized clinical trials involving a low number of patients. The development of potential preventive therapies against the phenoconversion of isolated RBD to synucleinopathies should be another important aim of RBD therapy. The design of long-term, multicentre, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials involving a large number of patients diagnosed with isolated RBD with polysomnographic confirmation, directed towards both symptomatic and preventive therapy for RBD, is warranted.

Keywords

• REM sleep behaviour disorder
• neurochemistry
• neurotransmitters
• dopaminergic dysfunction
• noradrenalin
• acetylcholine