Where did Narcolepsy
Originate
Narcolepsy can be found in both men and women
of any ages. However, the symptoms of narcolepsy normally occur
during the teenage years. In certain cases, it can also occur
in adults and young children.
The specific
characteristic of narcolepsy is there might be certain
years after the onset disease before it was diagnosed.
There are no remedy or cure for narcolepsy which can be
deemed chronic and can last for a life time. Fortunately,
narcolepsy sufferers can improve their condition with
special treatment combine with the therapy and
medication.
Two main
narcolepsy symptoms are abnormal pattern of rapid eye
movement sleep and extreme sleepiness during daytime. For
those who suffer narcolepsy, the sleep cycles are altered
and it’s not normal. The rapid eye movement sleep appears
after falling asleep, instead of the normal period sleep.
Some specific characteristics causes by rapid eye
movement sleep are hallucinations, cataplexy and sleep
paralysis.
After extensive
research on narcolepsy, it was found that narcolepsy was
actually originated by the brain cells that are lack of
hypocretin. There were also searches for defects in the
genes and brains of narcolepsy patients at were found
that narcolepsy is also originated by relatives like
parents or sister that also suffer
narcolepsy.
It has been found
that small peptide or protein which is usually present in
the brains of people without narcolepsy was almost absent
in people with narcolepsy. This was found by the research
that being done on dogs with narcolepsy and problem with
the hypocretin gene. From the narcolepsy patient, it
showed that almost narcoleptics have no hypocretin in the
spinal fluid.
Researchers also
think that narcolepsy is originated from the lack of
peptide in narcoleptics' brain. Now, what scientist and
researcher have to do is to work really hard to develop
types of drug that might go through the brain to replace
the peptide. They have to develop the right kind of drug
as the number of neurons that contain hypocretin found in
narcoleptic’s brain were almost 85% to 95% less that
people without narcolepsy.
Those entire
discovery about the cell loss in narcoleptic’s brain were
just like the first chapter in research about narcolepsy.
There is more research to be conducted in order to get
more information about where the narcolepsy really
originates from. Looking forward, attention must be
altered to make use of the knowledge and information that
were gathered during the research. This is to develop
much better and improved method for effective treatments
for narcolepsy. For future research, they are trying to
determine what really cost the cell to be loss in the
brain of narcoleptics and to do some testing in drugs
that can replace the hypocratin.
So, when
researchers already know where narcolepsy actually
originates, it actually really help and it’s easier for
them to extend their research in term of finding the cure
for narcolepsy in the future.
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