Restless Leg Syndrome – Risk Factors

Transcript

There are several different risk factors associated with RLS. The first is definitely genetic and in fact, Caucasians, much more than any other races in the world, are likely to have restless leg syndrome. Women twice as often will have restless leg syndrome versus men. And the older we get, the more likely we are to develop restless leg syndrome, but it’s associated with an iron deficiency. So if somebody has had a terrible motor vehicle accident and has lost a lot of blood or had a surgery where they’ve lost a lot of blood, whereas developed anemia because they have unfortunately a slow bleed in their gut and they’re becoming more and more iron deficient, they’re much more likely to have it. So renal disease, which affects the kidneys, but the kidneys also have a job of stimulating the bone marrow to make red blood cells will also be a disease risk factor for restless leg syndrome. Certain medications can bring it on as well. And those can include common drugs like antidepressants, the SSRI drugs and the Prozac family, for example, can cause restless leg syndrome. Uh, anti-histamines like, uh, over the counter Benadryl or Zyrtec or any of those types of drugs can also cause this to happen. So a variety of drugs can create it. And the good news is once we take those drugs it can go away. Those are lucky cases to treat.