Did you know your legs were restless?

[Guest guest]

Did you know your legs were restless?

Few had heard of restless legs syndrome before ad campaign named it

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16908501/

Do you suffer from restless leg syndrome?

You've seen the commercial hundreds of times on this broadcast, but

what the heck is the condition? That's what we wondered, so we sent

correspondent Josh Mankiewicz to do some checking.

By Josh Mankiewicz

Correspondent

NBC News

LOS ANGELES — The television ads for restless legs syndrome show you

the problem, and the solution.

The syndrome, known commonly as RLS, affects millions and has been

known to some for at least 60 years. But until recently, most

people — even many physicians — had never heard of it. The drug

company GlaxoKline changed that.

The first ads were about symptoms and didn't mention Requip, the

drug manufactured by Glaxo that combats RLS. Instead, Glaxo focused

on turning RLS into a household name.

" I'm not generally a big fan of direct-to-consumer TV ads, " says Dr.

Mark Buchfuhrer. " However, for this particular disorder, I think

they've done a great service by spending most of the time

identifying the problem. "

But in the process, Glaxo also identified a market and began

introducing Americans to a problem many people didn't realize they

had, or had never mentioned to their physicians.

" This is by no means a new concept, you can go back the 1930s when

Listerine first coined the term halitosis to capture the idea of bad

breath, " says Parry with Y Brand, a XXXXXX. " So, you have a

problem and an identified solution. "

Requip already existed as a medication for Parkinson's disease, but

in 2005 it was also cleared as the first treatment for RLS, and

sales took off — nearly doubling — earning Glaxo hundreds of

millions of dollars and giving RLS patients like Cada Kilgore a good

night's sleep.

" Worked like a charm, never had a problem since, " Kilgore says.

Some doctors question whether RLS is as prevalent as the ads make it

seem. And early on, some Glaxo executives also were skeptical, as

can be heard in an excerpt from a conference call with financial

analysts last October.

" Many of you doubted the potential of this indication. I doubted the

potential of this indication, and there was a lot of debate within

the company. But clearly, our marketers knew what they were doing,

and it's been a success for us. "

An old disorder has a new treatment, and it's as much a triumph of

marketing as medicine.