Restless Legs Syndrome - Biomarkers and Inflammation (en Inglés) - Khosro Hekmat

No value proves restless legs - but two decide what helps.

There is no blood test for restless legs syndrome. Yet few conditions lead to so many tests being ordered, or to so many results being misread. A ferritin within the reference range is often too low for someone with restless legs, and inflammation can raise it so that the iron stores look fuller than they are.

This volume explains the numbers on the laboratory report. It separates the results that guide treatment from those that help to interpret the others, and both from the markers that still belong to research rather than the consulting room. Ferritin, transferrin saturation and CRP are read together, with a table to take along.

The second part follows the much discussed inflammation trail: where the suspicion comes from, what cytokines and blood count ratios actually show, in which inflammatory conditions restless legs really are more common - and how much of the trail holds up.

WHAT IS IN THE BOOK

- What a biomarker would have to achieve, and why none does so here

- Ferritin: the value that can do most and deceives most

- Transferrin saturation, haemoglobin and the rest of the iron picture

- What the cerebrospinal fluid shows, and why nobody measures it

- Hepcidin: the best candidate and its failure

- Cytokines, interleukins and the blood count ratios NLR and PLR

- Protein patterns, methylation, ultrasound and MRI as markers

- The laboratory form: what should be measured and what should not

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

For patients who want to understand their own laboratory results, for anyone additionally burdened by an inflammatory or rheumatic condition, and for health professionals who want the state of biomarker research in orderly form.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Volume 13 of 52 in the book series on restless legs syndrome, part "Forms of the Condition and Differential Diagnosis". Every volume can be read on its own. The statements in this volume rest on 207 professional sources, each one listed individually in the reference section.