Spectrum of narcolepsy

Abstract

Westphal in 1877 and Gélineau in 1880, the first describers of narcolepsy, correctly identified excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy as the essential features of the disorder (1,2). At the beginning of the 20th century, Löwenfeld, Henneberg, Redlich and Adie were among the first to accept narcolepsy as a “disease sui generis” (3–5) (6). Until the 1930s and even later other authors including Blocq and Wilson considered however narcolepsy a nonspecific form of severe hypersomnia due to different potential causes (7,8).