Lack of muscle control can range from a drooping head to buckling knees. Cataplexy is triggered by intense emotions, usually positive ones like laughter and excitement, but can be caused by fear, surprise, or anger. It can last from a few seconds to a few minutes. Cataplexy can range from slurred speech to a complete loss of muscle control. It too is uncontrollable, but has a much different set of symptoms. While narcolepsy is a matter of excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy is something altogether different. Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder that makes wakefulness impossible at times, regardless of circumstances. Not the case at all! Sufficient sleep definitely helps those diagnosed with a sleep disorder, but it isn’t just a case of individuals staying up too late and falling asleep at work on a daily basis. Callers are often stymied by something that is not visible and seems to be something that a good night’s sleep should take care of. Individuals who call requesting assistance in explaining sleep disorders to their employers often share not only the same symptoms displayed by the heroine mentioned above, but also the same employment concerns.Įmployees who disclose sleep disorders often encounter doubt and disbelief that their conditions are real. We consult with many callers at JAN who have questions about narcolepsy. It was evident in the storyline how those factors affected not only her general health and well-being, but also her employment as well. What I found most interesting were the feelings of the character and how she tried to keep her medical condition as private as she could and her schedule as routine as possible to enable her to have sufficient sleep that in itself helped ward off her terrifying episodes of cataplexy. Based on what I already knew about both conditions, the information seemed to be detailed, factual, accurate, and represented very realistically. It was both interesting and informative to read about the main character’s sleep disorder, health issues, and medication regimen. I recently read a novel where the heroine had narcolepsy and along with that cataplexy. Further studies are warranted to assess clinical course and whether the associated movement disorder is also caused by hypocretin deficiency or by additional neurochemical abnormalities.From the desk of Melanie Whetzel, M.A., CBIS, Principal Consultant, Team Lead These observations suggest that paediatric narcolepsy with cataplexy often co-occurs with a complex movement disorder at disease onset, a phenomenon that may vanish later in the course of the disease. ![]() "Active" and "negative" motor scores correlated positively with the presence of hypotonic features at neurological examination and negatively with disease duration, whereas "negative" motor scores also correlated negatively with age at disease onset. We found that patients with narcolepsy with cataplexy displayed a complex array of "negative" (hypotonia) and "active" (ranging from perioral movements to dyskinetic-dystonic movements or stereotypies) motor disturbances. ![]() Noting that children with narcolepsy often display complex abnormal motor behaviours close to disease onset that do not meet the classical definition of cataplexy, we systematically analysed motor features in 39 children with narcolepsy with cataplexy in comparison with 25 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. ![]() Narcolepsy with cataplexy is most often associated with human leucocyte antigen-DQB1*0602 and is caused by the loss of hypocretin-producing neurons in the hypothalamus of likely autoimmune aetiology. Narcolepsy with cataplexy is characterized by daytime sleepiness, cataplexy (sudden loss of bilateral muscle tone triggered by emotions), sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucinations and disturbed nocturnal sleep.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |