Interesting. I know Naltrexone from one context (apart from being an opioid antagonist): It is known to be an antiinflammatory that crosses the blood-brain-barrier, Jarred Younger has done research for that (see for example https://www.birminghammedicalnews.com/n ... Story=3241). It's fairly unique because there are very few antiinflammatory agents acting in the brain, all the usual NSAIDs can't cross the blood brain barrier.
A quick search for "dopamine agonists inflammation" yielded a few results that dopamine and dopamine agonists also act as anti-inflammatory agents.
Now I'm strongly biased because I have suspected that inflammation in the brain (which is notoriously difficult to diagnose and treat) might be at the core of RLS for a long time.
There is the iron connection: A standard response from the immune system is to shut iron away, moving it out of the blood stream into the ferritin storage, to make iron unavailable for whatever intruders we might have. Unfortunately this can lead to a functional iron deficiency for our own cells, too. Which makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint because constant inflammation is something that would have been extremely rare for our ancestors -- the mechanism was designed to combat invading viruses and bacteria for a week or two at the most. After that we would either be cured or dead.
Opioids are anti-inflammatory too, as are Gabapentin and Lyrica. Could this be the unifying action of all the RLS drugs?
Naltrexone for RLS?
Re: Naltrexone for RLS?
I take 1.0 mg of Mirapex, 900 mg of Gabapentin and 25mg/25mg of Naltrexone, the latter splitting the 50 mg pill into a morning and evening doses. Is 50 mg of Naltrexone considered high dose? I thought it was low dose Naltrexone.
Re: Naltrexone for RLS?
I am waiting for the day when others try Naltrexone for augmentation and/or impulse control. I just submitted a piece for the Bedtime Stories in Nightwalkers. Hope they publish it but they may not as it just one person trying something new and lots of people are trying nonconventional approaches. But I am hopeful as this will get the word out more broadly. My neurologist here in Mexico, whose specialty is movement disorders, says he is going to experiment with Naltrexone.