Scripps Gets Grant to Study Sleep Disorder : Health: The four-year research project into narcolepsy, which plagues one in 1,000 Americans, is the first of its kind.

In what is claimed be the first study of its kind, the Scripps Research Institute has been awarded $1.16 million from the National Institutes of Health to research the sleep disorder narcolepsy, Scripps officials announced Monday.

With the four-year grant, researchers will try to determine how the disorder is passed from one generation to another and whether a single gene causes narcolepsy, which plagues one in 1,000 Americans.

“There’s been very little in the way of federal grants invested in narcolepsy, yet it’s a disabling and not at all rare disease,” said Merrill Mitler, research director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation and the study’s principal investigator. “It’s as prevalent as multiple sclerosis and about as debilitating.”

People afflicted with narcolepsy have attacks of overwhelming drowsiness. The sensations can be so overpowering that the individual can fall asleep mid-sentence in a conversation or while driving a car or operating machinery--an attribute that makes it difficult for some narcoleptics to hold jobs, Mitler said.

The episodes, which can occur several times a day, typically last a few seconds to half an hour.

About half of all narcoleptics also suffer cataplexy, or sudden episodes of muscle weakness triggered by emotions such as anger, joy or surprise. The victim abruptly loses muscle control and literally collapses into sleep.

Scientists believe that narcolepsy might be caused by a biochemical defect in the central nervous system, and they believe the defect is inherited.

With careful sleuthing, they have tracked the disorder to a group of genes at a particular location on human chromosome No. 6. But they do not yet know which gene is the culprit.

In the study, Scripps scientists will examine two genes that appear in nearly all narcoleptics but are present in only 25% of the general population, Mitler said.

Because past studies have not linked these two genes to narcolepsy, Mitler and his colleagues will examine whether there is another gene, right next to the two under scrutiny, that might cause the disorder.

If Mitler’s research leads to a genetic test that could alert parents that their baby is likely to develop narcolepsy, many families will be saved the anguish of trying to figure out what can seem to be a mysterious malady.

Often the symptoms of narcolepsy are misinterpreted, with sufferers labeled lazy or as having drug or psychological problems, experts say.

“The sad thing is that so many people don’t realize what they have; the symptoms are often misunderstood,” said Mary Lee Keane, president of the American Narcolepsy Assn. in San Francisco. “If research leads to a genetic test, obviously that’s a great boon.”

Indeed, the disorder can wreak havoc on ane individual and his family. Christopher Dow, now 19, was 15 when he was found to have narcolepsy. But his father, Herb, said he and his wife had noticed signs of the disorder even before their son was in kindergarten.

“We spent years going from doctor to doctor,” said Dow, of Chatsworth. “We didn’t know what it was for the longest time.”

When Christopher was 15, a doctor prescribed sleeping pills, thinking the boy wasn’t getting enough rest at night, and the teen-ager “went from a beast to an angel,” Dow recalled. That was the first time the family realized the problem could be sleep-related rather than psychological.

The benefits of the pills, however, were temporary, and narcolepsy was eventually diagnosed. Treatment for the disorder includes a combination of anti-depressants and stimulants.

Dow said he was stunned that it had taken so long to figure out what was plaguing his son.

“So little research is done,” he said, “considering how much time we spend sleeping every day.”