Restless Legs Might Mean Heart Disease

A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston suggests that people with restless legs syndrome might be at increased risk of having a stroke or heart disease. The study appears in the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Restless legs syndrome or RLS is a condition in which sufferers have a strong, irresistible urge to move their legs. This feeling is often accompanied by an itching, gnawing or tugging feeling in the legs. 5-10% of adults suffer from this condition with around 80% of patients feeling the urge to move their legs periodically during sleep.

The condition can often lead to sufferers facing from sleep deprivation. To check whether the condition can have other effects, researchers led by Dr. John Winkelman studied 3,433 men and women with an average age of 68. All the subjects were enrolled in a sleep study.

The researchers got all participants to fill in a detailed questionnaire, based on which they found that about 7% of women and 3% of men had RLS. An analysis of the data collected revealed that these people had more than twice the risk of having a heart disease or stroke. To remove other factors, the researchers made adjustments for obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and smoking; however their findings held.

They also found that volunteers with the most severe symptoms of RLS were at the highest risk. “The association of RLS with heart disease and stroke was strongest in those people who had RLS symptoms at least 16 times per month,” Dr. Winkelman, a sleep researcher at Harvard Medical School said.

“There was also an increased risk among people who said their RLS symptoms were severe compared to those with less bothersome symptoms,” he said. While the study did not show RLS to be a cause for heart disease or stroke, Dr. Winkelman believes the periodic leg movements associated with it could be one of the causes.

“Most people with RLS have as many as 200 to 300 periodic leg movements per night of sleep and these leg movements are associated with substantial acute increases in both blood pressure and heart rate, which may, over the long term, produce cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease,” Dr. Winkelman said.

According to the researchers, the sleep deprivation caused by RLS might also be a major contributing factor to the development of heart disease. The research is not the first one on the subject, but confirms the findings of several smaller studies conducted previously.

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