You didn’t know? Baffles me, but here is a link to E. Mignot. He alone is instrumental to the understanding of N. I expect him to receive the Noble Prize soon.
It's easy to miss! The only reason I know is because of all of the research I've done into my Idiopathic Hypersomnia diagonsis. Mignot is well-respected because of his research.
It seems it's possible to get it from hypocretin deficiency via other routes like brain trauma, but they are confident enough to put this explanation in the DSM-5:
> Narcolepsy-cataplexy nearly always results from the loss of hypothalamic hypocretin
(orexin)-producing cells, causing hypocretin deficiency (less than or equal to one-third of
control values, or 110 pg/mL in most laboratories). Cell loss is likely autoimmune, and approximately 99% of affected individuals carry HLA-DQBl06:02 (vs. 12%-38% of control
subjects). Thus, checking for the presence of DQB106:02 prior to a lumbar puncture for evaluation of CSF hypocretin-1 immunoreactivity may be useful.
not a narcoleptic but I remember reading about this, particularly the narcolepsy cases after pandemrix vaccine (a flu vaccine) there was a stromng correlation between upper respiratory infections and narcolepsy. This wikipedia article has some links to these: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix
interesting to see several people here mentioned they got narcolepsy after this vaccine.
