• Xiaozhe Zhang, Jan W Kantelhardt, Xiao Song Dong, Dagmar Krefting, Jing Li, Han Yan, Frank Pillmann, Ingo Fietze, Thomas Penzel, Long Zhao, and Fang Han.
• Department of Respiratory Medicine, Peking University International Hospital, Beijing, China.
• Sleep. 2017 Feb 1; 40 (2).

IntroductionWe investigate how characteristics of sleep-wake dynamics in humans are modified by narcolepsy, a clinical condition that is supposed to destabilize sleep-wake regulation. Subjects with and without cataplexy are considered separately. Differences in sleep scoring habits as a possible confounder have been examined.Aims And MethodsFour groups of subjects are considered: narcolepsy patients from China with (n = 88) and without (n = 15) cataplexy, healthy controls from China (n = 110) and from Europe (n = 187, 2 nights each). After sleep-stage scoring and calculation of sleep characteristic parameters, the distributions of wake-episode durations and sleep-episode durations are determined for each group and fitted by power laws (exponent α) and by exponentials (decay time τ).ResultsWe find that wake duration distributions are consistent with power laws for healthy subjects (China: α = 0.88, Europe: α = 1.02). Wake durations in all groups of narcolepsy patients, however, follow the exponential law (τ = 6.2-8.1 min). All sleep duration distributions are best fitted by exponentials on long time scales (τ = 34-82 min).ConclusionsWe conclude that narcolepsy mainly alters the control of wake-episode durations but not sleep-episode durations, irrespective of cataplexy. Observed distributions of shortest wake and sleep durations suggest that differences in scoring habits regarding the scoring of short-term sleep stages may notably influence the fitting parameters but do not affect the main conclusion.© Sleep Research Society 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Sleep Research Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.

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