Unveiling the Pathophysiology of Restless Legs Syndrome through Transcriptome Analysis

The aim of this study was to analyze signaling pathways associated with differentially expressed mRNAs in people with restless legs syndrome (RLS). Seventeen RLS patients and 18 controls were enrolled. Coding RNA expression profiling of 12,857 gene transcripts by next-generation sequencing was performed. Enrichment analysis by pathfindR tool was carried-out, with p-adjusted ≤0.001 and fold-change ≥2.5. Nine main different network groups were significantly dysregulated in RLS: infections, inflammation, immunology, neurodegeneration, cancer, neurotransmission and biological, blood and metabolic mechanisms. Genetic predisposition plays a key role in RLS and evidence indicates its inflammatory nature; the high involvement of mainly neurotropic viruses and the TORCH complex might trigger inflammatory/immune reactions in genetically predisposed subjects and activate a series of biological pathways – especially IL-17, receptor potential channels, nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells, NOD-like receptor, MAPK, p53, mitophagy and ferroptosis – involved in neurotransmitter mechanisms, synaptic plasticity, axon guidance, neurodegeneration, carcinogenesis and metabolism.