Mansour Deylami; Majid Vatankhah; Tayyebeh Zarei; Ehsan Rahmanian; Farshid Javdani; Shahram Shafa; Hasan Zabetian; Minou Najar Nobari; Kaveh Hedayati Emami; Fatemeh Maleki; Amin Shafiei; Vida Hafezi; Roohie Farzaneh; Mohammad Sadegh Sanie Jahromi
Abstract
The concern has recently been raised for disease status and management of people with narcolepsy after initiation of COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we evaluated the literature to determine ...
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The concern has recently been raised for disease status and management of people with narcolepsy after initiation of COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we evaluated the literature to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of narcolepsy patients. This was a systematic review and meta-analysis study on online databases of Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and ScienceDirect using keywords of “Narcolepsy”, “Sleepiness “, “cataplexy”, “nightmare”, “nocturnal sleep”, “COVID-19”, “Pandemic”, “SARS-COV2”, and “Coronavirus”, looking for observational studies. Statistical analyses were performed by CAM software with significance level being considered at under 0.05 as statistically significant. Total number of 9 studies were included with 607 patients with narcolepsy. With a heterogeneity of 99.94%, pooled mean differences (MD) of Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) scores before and after the pandemic/lockdowns was -1.54 (95%CI: -1.55 to -1.53, P<0.01). The most prevalently increased symptom among the narcolepsy patients was naps taken during the day (58.81%, 95%CI of 50.85 to 66.34) followed by the increased appetite (45.15%, 95%CI of 28.91 to 62.49). Our study shows that disease status of narcolepsy patients is affected by COVID-19 pandemic. We can assist narcolepsy patients in this challenging position by being aware of their unique demands during the COVID-19 illness and sympathetic to their sensitivity.
