Hi, glad you found the post. This is the link for your original post.
INerves and Restlessness - extra dimension to Parkinsons! March 2013
I’ve posted a lot about Akathisia because the consequences of misdiagnosis can be catastrophic. Chapter below outlines criteria, clinical characteristics & need to identify any drugs you have taken which are known to cause it. You might wait a very long time for an expert to do this for you so DIY is called for.
Acute and Tardive Drug-induced Akathisia P.S.Sachdev (in Drug-Induced Movement Disorders K.D. Sethi 2004 Informa Health Care)
You can check separately for each drug online in the ‘Information for professionals’ section of side effects.
eg Madopar Madopar 50 mg/12.5 mg Dispersible Tablets - Patient Information Leaflet (PIL) - (emc) March 2016
4.4 Special warnings and precautions for use
Depression can be part of the clinical picture in patients with Parkinson’s disease and RLS and may also occur in patients treated with Madopar. All patients should be carefully monitored for psychological changes and depression with or without suicidal ideation.
4.8 Undesirable effects
Psychiatric Disorders: Depression Anxiety Insomnia aggression
Nervous System Disorders: Dyskinesia (choreiform and athetotic)
Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders : Restless Legs Syndrome
As you can see the word akathisia appears nowhere. The emotional distress is often misdiagnosed as anxiety/depression (blame the patient not the drug) , the physical symptoms trivialized as restlessness.
Alternatively you can google the name of the drug together with the word akathisia and see if any patient/case reports come up. Or you can try the name of the drug with the term “Extrapyramidal symptoms” This covers any combination of the drug-induced movement disorders akathisia, tardive dystonia , tardive dyskinesia and parkinsonism
Drug-Induced Dyskinesia, Part 1: Treatment of Levodopa-Induced Dyskinesia. Vijayakumar D, Jankovic J. Drugs. 2016 May;76(7):759-77.
Dyskinesias encompass a variety of different hyperkinetic phenomenologies, particularly chorea, dystonia, stereotypies, and akathisia.
Levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID) is one of the main types of drug-induced dyskinesia, occurring in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) who have been treated with levodopa for long time, but this side effect may be encountered even within a few weeks or months after initiation of levodopa therapy.
Akathisia in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease. Lang AE, Johnson K. Neurology. 1987 Mar;37(3):477-81.
Interviews of 100 patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease indicated that 68% periodically experienced the need to move and inability to remain still, usually because of well-defined causes such as parkinsonism and sensory complaints. Twenty-six patients could not explain the inability to remain still, a state of true akathisia.
Akathisia in Parkinson’s disease. Comella CL, Goetz CG. Mov Disord. 1994 Sep;9(5):545-9.
Overall, 45% of PD patients had akathisia as determined by clinical evaluation.
Nonmotor fluctuations in Parkinson’s disease: frequent and disabling. Witjas T, Kaphan E, Azulay JP, Blin O, Ceccaldi M, Pouget J, Poncet M, Chérif AA. Neurology. 2002 Aug 13;59(3):408-13.
All patients had had at least one type of NMF, most of which were associated with the “off” state.
Anxiety (66%), drenching sweats (64%), slowness of thinking (58%), fatigue (56%), and akathisia (54%) were the most frequent NMF.
Effect of levodopa and carbidopa on non-motor symptoms and signs of Parkinson’s disease. Rahman MM, Uddin MJ, Chowdhury JH, Chowdhury TI. Mymensingh Med J. 2014 Jan;23(1):18-23.
Among the non-motor symptoms (NMS), the most frequent symptoms at base line visit were fatigue 56.8%, excessive sweating 54.9%, insomnia 54.9%, akathisia 47.1%, anxiety 45.1%, constipation 17.6%.
https://outcometracker.org/library/BAS.pdf Barnes Akathisia Rating Scale (BARS) - tool for formal assessment