A new study provides surprising evidence that people with
narcolepsy have an increased number of neurons that produce histamine,
suggesting that histamine signaling may be a novel therapeutic target for this
potentially disabling sleep disorder.
"The orexin/ /hypocretin neuropeptides (eg melanin-concentrating hormone) promote wakefulness, and researchers have known for 13 years that narcolepsy is caused by loss of the orexin/hypocretin neurons in the hypothalamus,"
narcolepsy patients had 94 percent more histaminergic tuberomammillary nucleus (TMN) neurons.
According to the authors, the surprising increase in wake-promoting histaminergic neurons in narcolepsy may be a compensatory response to the loss of orexin/hypocretin neurons. It also may contribute to some of the symptoms of narcolepsy such as preserved consciousness during cataplexy and fragmented nighttime sleep.
So basically, its either increased histamine signalling, or a compensatory response to increased histamine signalling leading to a loss of orexin/hypocretin neurons that may underlie narcolepsy. We know histamine is sedative like, so my thoughts firstly were excess histamine, not so much resptonses to it, but both are plausible targets for pharmaceutical intervention, time will no doubt show which theory holds more merit for treatment purposes, if nothing else.
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