People who suffer from restless leg syndrome (RLS)
often have debilitating psychiatric disorders, including
depression and anxiety, investigators reported today at
big medical convention in Montreal.
At a news conference during the
annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians,
Dr. Barbara Phillips of the University of Kentucky at
Lexington presented results of the annual sleep poll conducted
by the National Sleep Foundation. Phillips is president
of the Foundation.
Researchers conducted a telephone survey of some 1,500
randomly selected adults aged 18 and older. Their average
age was 49.
Symptoms of RLS were reported by 9.7 percent of the participants
- 8 percent of all men and 11 percent of all women.
Residents of the Southern and Western US had a higher
risk of RLS than those living in the Northeast US. Other
risk factors were heavy smoking, unemployment status,
hypertension, gastroesophageal reflux disease, arthritis,
diabetes, depression and anxiety.
Sleep apnea and insomnia appear to be other risk factors
for RLS, along with difficulty falling asleep (taking
more than 30 minutes), driving while drowsy and excessive
daytime fatigue.
Subjects with self-reported RLS also had a higher incidence
of being late for work, missing work, making errors at
work and missing social events because of fatigue more
often than those without RLS.
"There is definitely a circadian rhythm," Phillips stated.
Patients describe their symptoms as more of an urge to
move rather than actual pain, Phillips said. Sleep labs
are not actually necessary to make a diagnosis of RLS,
she added.
"No one really knows what causes RLS," Dr. Phillips said.
"RLS is probably not a single thing...A lot of things
look the same but aren't the same."
"Primary RLS probably has some genetic basis," she said.
"The brain content of iron is different in RLS...Iron
and dopamine stores are low...Treating iron deficiency
can correct the symptoms," she pointed out.
This past summer, FDA approved the dopamine agonist ropinirole
(Requip) as first-line therapy for RLS. Phillips predicts
that other similar drugs will soon receive similar approval.
She called for studies to better define the diagnosis
of restless leg syndrome.
Reference Source 89
November
3, 2005
