NeurologyAdvisor: A study in the Journal of Clinical Medicine sought to investigate high cognitive functioning in children with narcolepsy, and whether it was a protective factor for school and behavioral difficulties in this population.
This retrospective study included all children with idiopathic narcolepsy (N=74) observed in a national reference center for narcolepsy in France from 2010 to 2019. Patients were evaluated for clinical characteristics and underwent neuropsychological evaluation. Parents of the children responded to 4 questionnaires which assessed their child’s sleepiness and insomnia severity.
Nearly half (48%) of the children had difficulties at school. Sleep difficulties included cataplexies (91%), hypnagogic hallucinations (39%), and sleep paralysis (18%).
Results indicated a significant correlation between percentage of REM sleep in children with narcolepsy and IQ (r, 0.25; P =.04), in which the higher the IQ, the more REM sleep a child had. A similar correlation was trending towards significant between REM and IQ among children with (r, 0.37; P =.06) and without (r, 0.29; P =.05) high potential
