Mª Rosa Peraita Adrados
Specialist in Clinical Neurophysiology, founder and head of the Sleep Disorders and Epilepsy Unit of the Clinical Neurophysiology Service of the Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, currently retired
The study is of good quality, given the scientific expertise of the participants and their knowledge of the disease and available treatments.
Hypocretin/Orexin 2 receptor agonists such as TAK-816 (Oveporexton) in patients with type 1 narcolepsy, according to the authors, significantly improve daytime sleepiness and cataplexy over a period of eight weeks in 90 patients studied.
It has not been assessed whether it improves night-time sleep, which is often very disturbed in patients, or other symptoms such as obesity, high blood pressure, depression and cognitive disturbances that are often associated (comorbid) with narcolepsy.
The main problem is that the number of cases studied is limited and also the follow-up period of eight weeks.
The nocturnal sleep of the patients has not been studied and is very disturbed. The main side effects are insomnia and urinary urgency.