Sentences with phrase «hypocretin cells»

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.

The study doesn't explain why T cells target the hypocretin cells specifically, says Mignot.

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 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.

Not exact matches

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

Think of brain cells as rooms with locks called receptors on their surfaces and a hypocretin as a key that is also a stimulant.

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

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.

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

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.

Although later studies found no further evidence of an immune link, the coincidence made Mignot and many other sleep researchers suspect that an autoimmune attack was ravaging narcoleptics» hypocretin - producing cells.

Mignot and his colleagues identified a spontaneous genetic mutation in those animals that incapacitated a receptor in brain cells for 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.

Stanford University researchers found that narcoleptics lack the cells that create hypocretin, due to the body's immune system killing them off (gee thanks).