Background and purpose: Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder with clinical symptoms attributed to a reduced activation of the arousal system. Cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) is the expression of rhythmic arousability during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. CAP parameters, arousals and conventional sleep measures were studied in narcoleptic patients with cataplexy.
Patients and methods: Data were collected from all-night polysomnographic (PSG) recordings and the multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) on the intervening day of 25 drug-naive patients (10 males and 15 females; mean age: 34+/-16 years) after adaptation and exclusion of other sleep disorders. A group of 25 age- and gender-matched normal sleepers were selected as controls. Each PSG recording was subdivided into sleep cycles. Analysis of CAP included classification of A phases into subtypes A1, A2, and A3.
Results: There was an increase in sleep period time mainly due to an increased wake time after sleep onset. REM latency was sharply reduced. The percentage of NREM sleep was slightly reduced and the balance between light sleep (S1+S2) and deep sleep (S3+S4) showed a curtailment of the former, while deep sleep was slightly increased. Excluding sleep cycles with sleep onset REM periods (SOREMPs), the duration of ordered sleep cycles was not different between narcoleptics and controls. The two groups showed similar values of arousal index, while CAP time, CAP rate, number of CAP cycles and of phase A subtypes (in particular subtypes A1) were significantly reduced in narcoleptic patients.
Conclusions: The reduced periods of CAP in narcoleptic NREM sleep could be the electroencephalographic (EEG) expression of a generally reduced arousability or an increased strength of sleep-promoting forces in the balance between sleep and arousal systems. This can explain some of the clinical correlates of the disorder, i.e. excessive sleepiness, short sleep latency and impaired attentive performances, even without any sign of arousal-induced sleep fragmentation.