ScienceDaily (May 3, 2009) — Ten years ago, Stanford University School of Medicine scientist Emmanuel Mignot, MD, PhD, and his colleagues made headlines when they identified the culprit behind the sleep disorder narcolepsy. Now Mignot and his collaborators have shown for the first time that a specific immune cell is involved in the disorder — confirming experts' long-held suspicion that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease.
The work, which will be published online May 3 in Nature Genetics, could lead to better treatments for the sleep disorder and help immunologists understand other, more common autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and juvenile diabetes.
"We're now getting the main pieces of what's happening in narcolepsy," said Mignot, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator who has been studying the disease for more than two decades. "What's most satisfying to me is that we're bringing this story to a close and that we can use narcolepsy as a model for other diseases."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090503132613.htmwow.. very interesting