WEDNESDAY, Nov. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Anesthesia does not induce or exacerbate restless leg syndrome (RLS), according to a letter published in the Nov. 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, while the active ingredient in allergy medications can exacerbate the condition, according to a study presented Nov. 16 at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C.
In the NEJM letter, Thomas A. Crozier, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues from the University of Gottingen Medical School in Germany, surveyed 147 patients who received spinal anesthesia and 212 patients who received general anesthesia for elective surgery, on admission and postoperatively regarding symptoms of RLS. They found that 8.9 percent of patients had pre-existing RLS, and no patient developed the condition postoperatively or had a worsening of pre-existing symptoms.
In the study presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, Richard Allen, Ph.D., and colleagues from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, treated 12 patients with RLS with either a true sedative or diphenhydramine, an allergy medication ingredient that affects the histamine system and induces sleepiness. They found that while sedatives had little effect on RLS, diphenhydramine made the condition as much as three to four times worse. In five of six patients whose brains were autopsied, they found a higher number of histamine-3 receptor proteins in the substantia nigra, the part of the brain implicated in RLS.
"The histamine system appears to alter the balance of the nervous system so that one is not sleepy in the daytime, even with sleep loss, which might explain why RLS patients can get by on so little sleep," Allen comments in a press release. "This also suggests that histamine receptors might be a new target for study and therapy of RLS."
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