Evaluation of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio in essential tremor

Introduction - Although essential tremor (ET) is the most common cause of tremor, the pathology and underlying mechanisms have not fully understood yet. In addition to kinetic tremor, patients may present several types of tremor, gait ataxia, hearing deficits and eye movement abnormalities. Non-motor symptoms and signs have also added to definition of ET. There is significant evidence indicating the neurodegenerative nature of the disease. New studies indicate that inflammation may have a place in the etiology. The neutrophil-to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and the platelet-to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) have recently begun to be used as a marker of systemic inflammation. Our study aims at finding a clue for systemic inflammation in ET. Methods - 67 patients with ET and 40 healthy controls were recruited for the study. The total white blood cells (WBC), absolute neutrophil count, lymphocyte count and platelet count were retrieved. The NLR was calculated by dividing the neutrophil count by the lymphocyte count and the PLR was calculated by dividing the platelet count by the lymphocyte count. Results - Patient and control groups were similar in terms of age and gender. The mean age of patient group was 25.29 ± 8.24 years and that of control group was 26.77 ± 6.73 years. The NLRs were 1.85 ± 0.58 in the patient group and 1.96 ± 0.53 in the control group. For the patient group and the control group the PLRs were 103.52 ±32.80 and 91.26 ± 31.57 respectively. There were no statistically significant differences between the participants for both NLR and PLR. Conclusion - The pathophysiological mechanism for essential tremor (ET) remains unclear. However, there is an increasing amount of research being conducted on the subject. Discussions about ET’s definition as a neurodegenerative disease are ongoing. Although previous studies showed that neuroinflammation could be a part of etiology of disease, this study has failed to demonstrate systemic inflammation in ET.