Narcolepsy Essay Research Paper Narcolepsy is a

Narcolepsy Essay, Research Paper

Narcolepsy is a disease that has been on the having terminal of many gags in our society. Yet it is a serious and life changing disease that is no express joying affair to the 1,000 in every 2,000 people in the U.S. that have it.

I was drawn to this article because a former supervisor that I worked with had this disease. She was prescribed the drug Ritalin. It ever impressed me that she could face an angry client or give a address without yielding to the symptoms of her disease. She revealed that her instance of narcolepsy wasn & # 8217 ; t that bad, but without the Ritalin she would merely fall asleep anyplace.

& # 8220 ; The overall incident of narcolepsy is approximately 10 times that of Lou Gehrig & # 8217 ; s disease, half that of multiple induration, five times that of cystic fibrosis, and about one one-fourth that of Parkinson & # 8217 ; s disease. & # 8221 ; Narcolepsy is a chronic disease, but non a progressive 1. It is a perplexing neurological upset that causes cataplexy, the loss of skeletal musculus tone without loss of consciousness, and relentless daylight drowsiness. Cataplectic onslaughts of narcolepsy can be triggered by extremely strong emotions such as laughter, embarrassment, choler, and athletic or sexual effort.

In trials on narcoleptic Canis familiariss, Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford and his colleagues identified a cistron responsible for narcolepsy in Canis familiariss. & # 8220 ; His research group determined that the Canis familiariss carry a mutant in the receptor for a neurotransmitter called hypocretin or orexin. & # 8221 ; These receptors are losing a critical portion, so th

ey can’t respond usually to messages they receive. This is a recessionary trait in the eyetooths.

However, they province that it is improbable that most human narcoleptics have these mutated cistrons. Most narcoleptics have no narcoleptic relations, and the disease does non happen until the 2nd or 3rd decennary of life. Besides, they have concluded that in 75 per centum of the instances in which narcolepsy occurs in an indistinguishable twin, the other twin is unaffected. This, they say, indicates that environmental conditions are of import in human narcolepsy. What environmental conditions are they?

Damage to the hypocretin/orexin system due to environmental factors may mime the symptoms caused by mutants. They feel that narcolepsy may be an auto-immune disease, in that the organic structure turns against one of its ain tissues are cell types. & # 8220 ; The following measure will be to find whether the immune systems of narcoleptics are erroneously aiming the hypocretin/orexin receptors in their ain encephalons as foreign. & # 8221 ; harmonizing to

Jerome Siegel.

There are no concrete replies at the present clip. Just hypotheses. Right now the lone thing that scientific discipline has to offer a narcoleptic is drugs to command their symptoms. For which I am certain that the sick persons of this disease are really thankful.

We ne’er seem to care about a disease until it strikes us or a loved one or friend. I & # 8217 ; m thankful we have scientists out there who are working on replies to the causes and remedies of assorted diseases, that hopefully, we may ne’er hold juncture to cognize approximately.