Narkolepsie

Narcolepsy is a rare sleep-wake disorder. The main symptoms (cataplexy and excessive daytime sleepiness) are the result of a disorder of stage transition of wake, NREM and REM sleep. Narcolepsy therefore is considered to be a model disease for many other sleep-wake disorders. The symptoms are multi-facetted and display different phenotypes in children and youngsters as in adults, which cause difficulties in establishing the correct diagnosis. The psychosocial consequences differ according to the degree of the disorder and frequently cause incapacity to work or early retirement if the diagnosis is not established early. Unfortunately, latency to diagnosis is still very long and presently lasts up to 10 years in Europe. The reason for this long latency is the latency between the two main symptoms, excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy, or the very discrete presentation of symptoms, which can only be revealed by carefully taking medical history. Early diagnosis of narcolepsy is a hallmark to avoid the costly psychosocial consequences and the impairment of quality of life of patients.