“Patients with RLS [restless legs syndrome] had a higher mortality rate than similar men, and showed an especially strong tendency toward cardiovascular disease and hypertension,” says Sanford H. Auerbach, MD. The associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine published an editorial in the March 5, 2014 issue of the journal Neurology in response to an analysis of 12,556 men who were followed over time by the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, published in the same issue of Neurology, which showed multiple disease associations with RLS.
In earlier analyses of the same data, men with RLS were more likely to be diagnosed with lung disease, endocrine disease, diseases of nutrition and metabolism, and immune system problems. Auerbach suggests that restless leg syndrome is a meaningful biomarker for serious disease, and that RLS screening may become more common as a tool for primary care providers to identify patients at risk.
