Sleepiness that cannot be overcome: Narcolepsy and cataplexy

Narcolepsy: neural mechanisms of sleepiness and cataplexy.

Introduction Narcolepsy is a common cause of chronic sleepiness and is often accompanied by symptoms that include odd mixtures of sleep and wakefulness. A patient of ours is an intelligent and highly motivated young woman who developed unrelenting sleepiness during law school. No matter how much she slept at night, she struggled to stay awake while studying and her grades began to slip. One nig...

Narcolepsy and Cataplexy

After hearing the punch line of the joke, the teenager falls to the floor, almost as if actually punched. She remains there, completely unable to move. She hears her parents reassure her friends that they need not worry about her because she will be all right in a few minutes. She is embarrassed and frustrated as the episode continues, and her friends begin to leave. They bid her goodbye, but s...

Narcolepsy and Cataplexy

Epidemiology [3] Prevalence is estimated as 25 per 100,000 in Caucasian populations. [4] Age of onset is typically around adolescence. A smaller number of cases presents at around 35 years. Less than 5% of narcolepsy with cataplexy occurs in children. One study found that it was often linked to complex movement disorders. [5] It is possible that incidence statistics would increase if diagnostic...

Effects of thyrotropin-releasing hormone and its analogs on daytime sleepiness and cataplexy in canine narcolepsy.

The therapeutic potential of thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) and TRH analogs in narcolepsy, a sleep disorder characterized by abnormal rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and daytime sleepiness, was examined using the canine model. The effects of TRH and the biologically stable TRH analogs CG3703, CG3509, and TA0910 on daytime sleep and cataplexy, a symptom of abnormal REM sleep, were assessed u...

The neurobiology of narcolepsy-cataplexy.