0016 Autoimmunity To Hypocretin And Molecular Mimicry To Flu In Type 1 Narcolepsy

CD4+ T-Cell Reactivity to Orexin/Hypocretin in Patients With Narcolepsy Type 1

Introduction Narcolepsy type 1 is accompanied by a selective loss of orexin/hypocretin (hcrt) neurons in the lateral hypothalamus caused by yet unknown mechanisms. Epidemiologic and genetic associations strongly suggest an immune-mediated pathogenesis of the disease. Methods We compared specific T-cell reactivity to orexin/hcrt peptides in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of narcolepsy type...

Hypocretin/orexin, sleep and narcolepsy.

The discovery that hypocretins are involved in narcolepsy, a disorder associated with excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy and unusually rapid transitions to rapid-eye-movement sleep, opens a new field of investigation in the area of sleep control physiology. Hypocretin-1 and -2 (also called orexin-A and -B) are newly discovered neuropeptides processed from a common precursor, preprohypocret...

Hypocretin Pathology in Human Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy: Autoimmunity or Secondary to Infection?

Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that is characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, hypnagogic hallucination, and sleep paralysis. In the review presented here, we aim at focusing on the immunological aspects of the disease. Special attention will be given to the link between tumor necrosis factor-a (alpha) (TNF) and major histocompatibility class II (MHC II) antigens and on autoim...

Narcolepsy with hypocretin/orexin deficiency, infections and autoimmunity of the brain.

The loss of hypothalamic hypocretin/orexin (hcrt) producing neurons causes narcolepsy with cataplexy. An autoimmune basis for the disease has long been suspected and recent results have greatly strengthened this hypothesis. Narcolepsy with hcrt deficiency is now known to be associated with a Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) and T-cell receptor (TCR) polymorphisms, suggesting that an autoimmune pro...