Narcolepsy Science Reawakens
Insights create a new order for disordered sleep
By Ben Harder
Early last December, an 8-year-old boy showed up in Sameer Zuberi’s pediatric neurology clinic in Glasgow, Scotland. Previously healthy and active, the child had suddenly become unable to stay awake, and he described vivid, dreamlike hallucinations. His mother told the physicians at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children that her son was no longer attending school and had dropped all outside activities, including his favorite and most successful one, tae kwon do.
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For Zuberi and his colleagues, the diagnosis was easy: The boy had experienced a dramatic onset of severe narcolepsy. After standard narcolepsy drugs failed to relieve his symptoms, however, the medical team realized that his treatment would be a challenge.