By American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Mar, 9, 2015
Narcoleptics suffer from bouts of sleepiness and sleep attacks, which impair their ability to function in daily life. But the precise cause of narcolepsy has long eluded scientists, and the cure for the devastating neurological disorder afflicting an estimated three million people worldwide – and one in 3,000 Americans – remains at bay.
A new study published in Pharmacological Research by the world’s leading autoimmune disease expert, Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Yehuda Shoenfeld, finds that narcolepsy bears the trademarks of a classic autoimmune disorder and should be treated accordingly. The research, led by Prof. Shoenfeld, the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair for Research of Autoimmune Diseases at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Head of Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases at Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, and conducted by doctoral student María-Teresa Arango, points to a particular autoimmune process as the trigger for the specific loss of orexin neurons, which maintain the delicate equilibrium between sleep and wakefulness in the brain.
Not just the genes… Read on below
Thanks for posting this article ! I read sparse articles that mentioned Narcolepsy as an auto-immune disease. his article is more informative.
I have Psoriatic Arthritis (PsA) and had Graves' Disease, both auto-immune diseases and my doc says people with PsA ususally have several auto-immune diseases. I'm sure there is a connection between my active PsA and my daily fatigue and hyper somnia episodes when I sleep 18-20 hours for a couple days, then 15 hours and work down to 10 hours.
I think people with an autoimmune disorder are likely to have more than one sadly.
The researchers go to and fro with the auto-immune disease question and in spite of the disappointment when the Stanford research article was retracted