The short answer is no – there are no links or connections; in other words, if you have WED-RLS (Willis-Ekbom Disease/Restless Legs Syndrome), you do not have an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. Nerve pain can have many causes, but if it is in one leg only and unrelated to WED/RLS, the most common cause is compression of the nerve roots in the lower back. This, too, does not imply an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and is not related to it.
First-degree relatives of a patient with Parkinson’s disease generally have a slightly increased risk of also developing the condition, but the predictability is very low; in other words, it is not simple so-called dominant genes that explain the manifestation of the condition, but rather so-called polygenic factors (many interacting genes, so-called risk genes, which cannot currently be analysed) and the outcome is entirely random. /Håkan Widner