Sentences with word «hypocretin»

they may need leptin infusions to offset the loss of hypocretin neurons in the hypothalamus from years of damage.

Using gene mapping techniques, the researchers zeroed in on a mutation in the gene for hypocretin receptor 2.

Researchers have engineered the genomes of mice so they have a light - sensitive inhibitory molecule that can shut down the wakefulness - promoting properties of neurons called hypocretin cells.

Their search turned up a suspect: a piece of a receptor for hypocretin resembles part of the H1N1 influenza nucleoprotein — which binds to the virus genome and plays a key role in its replication.

Three groups independently studying people with narcolepsy identified antibodies against the same protein, tribble 2, that's found on hypocretin neurons.

That knowledge, coupled with evidence that narcolepsy in humans might be an autoimmune disorder, has led many researchers to suspect that sufferers have immune systems that are genetically predisposed to attack and destroy hypocretin - producing cells.

We also found that a protein involved in modulating the sleep - wake cycle called orexin / hypocretin also influences Aβ levels in the brain.

Now a test of his spinal fluid showed a complete lack of the hormone hypocretin, which regulates wakefulness.

A new sleeping pill: In 2014, the FDA approved suvorexant, which blocks the alertness - modulating molecule hypocretin — the very compound that narcoleptics lack.

In the late 1990s, his team discovered that narcoleptics lack hypocretin, a hormone produced by a few brain cells that helps keep people and animals awake.

Thus hypocretin, Mignot says, may tell the brain to stay awake and alert.

Mignot and his colleagues have begun population studies to see whether hypocretin receptor 2 mutations appear in narcoleptic people.

In the absence of a cure — which would presumably involve regenerating hypocretin - producing neurons — the Blackwells hope better drugs become available soon.

An absence of hypocretin can indicate the sleep disorder narcolepsy, and that was Ben's diagnosis.

The result indicates that T cells and HLA, which together regulate much of the body's immune response, gang up in a unique way to destroy narcoleptics» hypocretin cells, the team reports online this week in Nature Genetics.

First identified in humans early last year, hypocretin receptor 2 was tentatively linked by other researchers to metabolism.

Since the late 1990s, scientists have known narcoleptics lack neurons that produce neuropeptides called hypocretins, which regulate wakefulness.

Here about 750 cells produce orexin (also known as hypocretin), a hormone that promotes wakefulness.

In most human cases, as research by Mignot and his colleague Seiji Nishino soon showed, the sufferer is deficient in hypocretin.

In late 2013, he published what seemed to be a breakthrough study of patients with narcolepsy, which identified self - reactive T - cells that pursued the hormone hypocretin.

He charged Zhang with conducting a study of hypocretin neurons, sleep - related cells located deep in the brain's hypothalamus.

Hypocretin — which binds to hypocretin receptor 2 — is manufactured in large quantities in some parts of the hypothalamus, an area known to be important in regulating sleep.

The hypocretin receptor 2 gene could be the single most important gene in human narcolepsy, says Michael Aldrich, a neurologist and director of the University of Michigan's Sleep Disorders Center.

Relying on tests that used blood from Pandemrix recipients, the study authors showed it triggered antibodies that not only attack the virus but also bind to hypocretin receptors, potentially killing them.

They focused this effect on the hypocretin neurons, which are brain cells in the lateral hypothalamus.

Unfortunately, hypocretin itself is too large to pass directly from the bloodstream into the brain, which is the way most neuroactive drugs work.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies are racing to design new narcolepsy drugs based on the discovery of hypocretin's central role in the disorder.

The next big clue came when Mignot of Stanford University tracked down a gene for narcolepsy in dogs and discovered it caused a mutation in a receptor for hypocretin, a neuropeptide involved in prodding the central nervous system awake and maintaining alertness and good muscle tone.

In patients with narcolepsy, their immune system destroys the hypocretin cells located in the brain, which are important in order for them to stay awake.

Researchers could explore whether somehow unblocking the receptor might allow the hypocretin system to recover, says Noni MacDonald, a pediatric vaccine researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

The flu vaccine is designed to trigger antibodies to influenza's surface proteins, but if it elicits antibodies to the nucleoprotein as well, those might well latch on to the hypocretin receptor, and eventually lead to death of the cells, the researchers thought.

Patients lose certain brain cells in the hypothalamus, leading to a deficiency of hypocretin, a molecule that helps regulate the sleep - wake cycle.