Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder caused by disruption of hypocretin (orexin) neurotransmission. Injection of hypocretin-1 acutely suppresses TRH and TSH release in rats. In contrast, subchronic administration does not appear to affect the hypothalamo-pituitary-thyroid ensemble in animals. We explored (in 7 patients and 7 controls) whether hypocretin deficiency impacts circulating TSH levels and c...

The goal of this multi-method, known-groups measurement study was to examine the validity (accuracy) of the pupillometric Alertness Level Test (ALT) as a physiologic measure of sleepiness. The study used a pooled-time series-correlation design with 16 untreated narcolepsy (8F, 8 M), 16 obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) (7 F, 9 M), and 16 healthy control (8 F, 8 M) subjects extensively screened to d...

nism underlying narcolepsy, a sleep disorder characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness and abnormal REM sleep, remains elusive, one of the susceptibility factor, HLADQB1*0602, has now been identified. Subjects homozygous or heterozygous for this HLA-DQB1 allele are at much greater risk of developing narcolepsy than subjects without this antigen. DNA sequencing studies, family studies and tr...

OBJECTIVES To detail clinical and polysomnographic characteristics in patients affected with Trypanosoma brucei gambiense (Tb.g.) human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) at different stages of evolution and to measure and compare cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of hypocretin-1 with narcoleptic patients and neurologic controls. METHODS Twenty-five untreated patients affected with T.b.g. HAT were ...

Hypocretins (Hcrts) are recently discovered peptides linked to the human sleep disorder narcolepsy. Humans with narcolepsy have decreased numbers of Hcrt neurons and Hcrt-null mice also have narcoleptic symptoms. Hcrt neurons are located only in the lateral hypothalamus (LH) but neither electrolytic nor pharmacological lesions of this or any other brain region have produced narcoleptic-like sle...