0000000000667513
AUTHOR
Pb Musholt
Elevated peripheral visfatin levels in narcoleptic patients.
OBJECTIVE: Narcolepsy is a severe sleep disorder that is characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexies and a tendency towards obesity. Recent discoveries indicate that the major pathophysiology is a loss of hypocretin (orexin) producing neurons due to immunologically mediated degeneration. Visfatin is a recently described proinflammatory adipokine. It is identical to the immune modulating pre-B-cell colony enhancing factor (PBEF). Our study examines the hypothesis that visfatin levels are altered in narcoleptic patients. METHODS: For the analysis, a total of n = 54 patients (n = 18 males and n = 36 females) with the diagnosis of narcolepsy according to DSM-IV and the Internatio…
Investigation of insulin resistance in narcoleptic patients: dependent or independent of body mass index?
Alice Engel1,2, Jana Helfrich1, Nina Manderscheid1, Petra B Musholt3, Thomas Forst3, Andreas Pfützner3, Norbert Dahmen1,21Department of Psychiatry, University of Mainz, Germany; 2Fachklinik Katzenelnbogen, Katzenelnbogen, Germany; 3IKFE, Institute for Clinical Research and Development, Mainz, GermanyBackground: Narcolepsy is a severe sleep-wake cycle disorder resulting in most cases from a lack of orexin, the energy balance-regulating hormone. Narcoleptic patients have been reported to suffer from an excess morbidity of Type 2 diabetes, even after correction for their often elevated body mass index.Methods: To explore whether narcolepsy is specifically associated with a propensity …