Middle-aged women with the most restless legs syndrome (RLS) episodes were 41 percent more likely to have high blood pressure than women without the disorder, according to a new study.
Additionally, the prevalence of high blood pressure increased with RLS symptom frequency.
The findings strongly suggest that RLS increases the risk for high blood pressure, but more research is needed to confirm the association, researcher Salma Batool-Anwar, MD, MPH, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, told WebMD.
“We cannot say from this study that restless legs syndrome causes blood pressure to rise, but we did see a significant relationship between the severity of (RLS) symptoms and prevalence of hypertension,” she said.
In an effort to better understand the impact of RLS on blood pressure, Batool-Anwar and colleagues analyzed data from the Nurses Health Study II, one of the largest and longest women’s health studies ever conducted.
The analysis included more than 65,500 female nurses whose average age was 50. The women were asked if they had experienced RLS, and to describe the frequency of their symptoms. They were also asked about their blood pressure status.
Women with arthritis and diabetes were excluded from the study because those conditions can mimic RLS.
After taking into account lifestyle factors [age, obesity, smoking] that raise the risk for high blood pressure, having RLS was associated with a 6 percent to 41 percent increase in the risk for hypertension.
About one in four (26 percent) women who had five to 14 episodes of RLS each month had high blood pressure, compared to 1 in 3 (33 percent) who had more than 15 episodes, and one in five (21 percent) who had no RLS symptoms at all.
According to WebMD, blood pressure specialist Dr. Domenic Sica says that while there is a growing body of research linking conditions that affect sleep quality like RLS with high blood pressure and heart disease, the issue is only now being recognized.
“In the foreseeable future, the hypertension specialist and, for that matter, any clinician actively treating hypertension will need to have more than a just passing knowledge of sleep patterns and sleep-related diseases to most effectively treat hypertension and accompanying cardiovascular diseases,” Sica and colleague David Leszczyszyn, MD, write.
This study was published online Monday and will appear in the November issue of the American Heart Association journal Hypertension
