Nationally-recognized sleep expert suggests that RLS is a meaningful BIOMARKER for serious disease

[CalmLegsJL]

Dr. Sanford Auerbach is a board certified neurologist and a board certified sleep specialist.

For a period of time, Dr. Auerbach devoted part of his efforts to neurorehabilitation and managed the brain injury unit at Braintree Hospital, in addition to developing a clinical program for Alzheimer’s disease at Boston Medical Center. Dr. Auerbach directed all of his efforts to activities at Boston Medical Center and the School of Medicine. He also developed an interest in sleep medicine and became the director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Boston Medical Center. In recent years, his efforts have been split between Sleep Medicine and Behavioral Neurology with an emphasis on dementia.

From Science Daily:

"A nationally-recognized sleep expert has published an editorial describing Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) as a possible biomarker for underlying disease.

The editorial appears in the March 5, 2014 issue of Neurology the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology and was authored by Boston Medical Center neurologist Sanford H. Auerbach, MD.

The editorial was 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.

'Patients with RLS had a higher mortality rate than similar men, and showed an especially strong tendency toward cardiovascular disease and hypertension' said Auerbach, associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.

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."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 191435.htm

[Rustsmith]

Because I had never seen Dr Auerbach's name mentioned before, I did some digging. His only publication on RLS is the one that is cited at the end of the editorial that your link points to. That publication was co-written with Dr Walters at Vanderbilt, who is a well known RLS doctor/researcher. Dr. Auerbach has a couple of other papers that mention RLS in the text, but all of these references occur in papers discussing either MS or other sleep conditions, such as REM Sleep Behavior Disorder and simply mention RLS as a frequent co-morbid condition.

As for his editorial, all that he says is that a study of men in a Massachusetts database have a correlation between cardiovascular disease and RLS. This is not new news and more recent work on the subject that also includes women has suggested that RLS can cause elevated blood pressure from sleep deprivation and the stress of having RLS and that it is this elevated blood pressure that may later result in CVD. Hence, the later studies suggest (but have not yet proven) that RLS can be a cause of high blood pressure and CVD, not the other way around.

Many medical publications show correlations between conditions but usually fail when it comes to determining which was the cause and which was the effect. That is part of the weakness of vast numbers of medical publications that Franobulax and I have mentioned previously.

[CalmLegsJL]

Because I had never seen Dr Auerbach's name mentioned before, I did some digging. His only publication on RLS is the one that is cited at the end of the editorial that your link points to. That publication was co-written with Dr Walters at Vanderbilt, who is a well known RLS doctor/researcher. Dr. Auerbach has a couple of other papers that mention RLS in the text, but all of these references occur in papers discussing either MS or other sleep conditions, such as REM Sleep Behavior Disorder and simply mention RLS as a frequent co-morbid condition.

As for his editorial, all that he says is that a study of men in a Massachusetts database have a correlation between cardiovascular disease and RLS. This is not new news and more recent work on the subject that also includes women has suggested that RLS can cause elevated blood pressure from sleep deprivation and the stress of having RLS and that it is this elevated blood pressure that may later result in CVD. Hence, the later studies suggest (but have not yet proven) that RLS can be a cause of high blood pressure and CVD, not the other way around.

Many medical publications show correlations between conditions but usually fail when it comes to determining which was the cause and which was the effect. That is part of the weakness of vast numbers of medical publications that Franobulax and I have mentioned previously.

I think it would be more accurate to say that this study inspired the idea of RLS being a bio-marker for other conditions. It's not like Dr. Auerbach broke down the study brick by brick and came up with the idea of RLS being a biomarker. It was more of a eureka moment.

When I was doing my research I had the same thought, that RLS was a bio-marker, but in my case I believe it's a signal for chronic inflammation in general.

The fact that two people from totally different backgrounds came to the same conclusion means something.

I had the pleasure of corresponding with Doctors Walters and also Dr. Weinstock several years ago. It was during the time that their groundbreaking paper was being prepared for publishing.

Dr. Weinstock in particular was interested in my input. We talked a lot. He actually got me to edit his Wikipedia page to include the new inflammation information.

During our correspondence I found studies to show that the 5 conditions that they said were not inflammatory actually had evidence supporting the idea that inflammation was their core issue. I remember bruxism being one of them. If I remember correctly they also included a couple conditions that I had found through studies that also showed a higher prevalence of RLS.

Anyway, Dr. Weinstock asked if I'd be interested in writing a chapter in a paper he was writing to give the perspective of a non-medical researcher, which I gladly accepted.

However he got sidetracked with a new passion that developed for low dose naltrexone (LDN). He went on a whole new tangent and presented studies on LDN use for RLS patients and SIBO sufferers. So unfortunately the paper never happened.

Both doctors were kind enough to give me a quote for my website indicating that inflammation is strongly linked to RSL.

I planned to post these quotes in a future post on this board, but will also post them here as well.

Considering that these two doctors are legendary in the world of RLS, these quotes carry a lot of weight.

"Our study suggests that RLS may be mediated through inflammatory or immunological mechanisms. Since inflammation is also associated with iron deficiency, these results are also in agreement with the iron deficiency hypothesis for RLS." - Dr. Arthur Walters, MD, Professor of Neurology, Vanderbilt Department of Neurology

"I have thoroughly analyzed every known scientific study that has been done on Restless Legs Syndrome. Taking all of this data into consideration, there is no doubt in my mind that inflammation plays a major role in the occurrence of RLS. I see this time and time again with many patient types." - Dr. Leonard Weinstock, MD, Certified in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology, St. Louis, MO