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Antonio Culebras, MD

Arch Neurol. 1999;56:117-118.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

INTRODUCTION

Narcolepsy is a lifelong disorder generally appearing in adolescence and typically exhibiting the tetrad of excessive sleepiness, cataplexy, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations. Not all patients develop the full symptomatology. The etiology remains unknown and treatment is symptomatic. Narcolepsy was described a little over 100 years ago and remained a rather esoteric diagnosis until the advent of clinically accessible sleep laboratories. Today, narcolepsy is diagnosed more frequently than multiple sclerosis and constitutes a socially incapacitating disorder when fully developed.

CLINICAL SIGNS

I propose to give the name of narcolepsy (from "narco" narcwsiv somnolence and "lepsy" lapdanein seized by) to a rare neurosis or at least little known until now, characterized by a mandatory need to sleep, sudden and of short duration, that recurs at more or less close intervals. The name will remind of the double analogy of narcolepsy with somnolence and catalepsy.¹

PATHOPHYSIOLOGY

TREATMENT

From the Neurology Service, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Department of Neurology, State University of New York Health Science Center, and the Sleep Center, Community General Hospital, Syracuse, NY.

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