Clinical experience suggests that modafinil is an effective and safe treatment for paediatric narcolepsy

摘要

Narcolepsy with cataplexy is a chronic, life-long, disablingcondition that occurs during childhood in approximately onethirdof subjects. It usually begins during the first or seconddecade of life, and symptoms may develop rapidly over a fewweeks or months, with excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS)and cataplexy being the most dramatic and observablesymptoms. Pharmacological treatments in children withnarcolepsy are mostly based on empirical data and clinicalexperience; randomized clinical trials are lacking and treatmentguidelines have not yet been established in narcolepticchildren (Ivanenko et al., 2003; Nevsimalova, 2009).