Undine's Syndrome - so beautifully called by doctors are periodic respiratory arrests that can be observed in both infants and adults. It would seem that such a thing?
However, such disruptions in the supply of oxygen to the body can lead not only to the development of various diseases of organs and systems, but also to death.
Why is that called?
Undine's syndrome got its name thanks to one of the old legends. According to her, the owner of the Ringstetten castle - the knight of Guldbrandt - got lost in the damned forest. He was saved from certain death by an old fisherman, giving shelter in his house. It was there that the noble knight fell in love with the immortal mermaid Undine - the adopted daughter of an old man. Undine also liked Gouldbrandt, and she agreed to become his wife and give birth to a child from him. Immortal mermaid after the birth of her son turned into an ordinary mortal woman. Many years passed, the years wiped the former beauty from the face of Undine and carried away the love of her husband. Once she saw Ondine her husband in the arms of a young person - Bertalda. What happened then, the legend does not specify whether Undine drowned herself in the Danube or if her husband helped her in this, dropping her from a steep cliff. But Gouldbrandt, who soon decided to marry the young Bertald, was awaited by a terrible life: when he appeared to him, the ghost of Undine cursed the treacherous traitor, making him constantly remember, even at night, about how to breathe. For him, the dream became fatal, because, falling asleep, he could not control his breathing and died.
Today, Undine's Syndrome is the unofficial name for stopping respiratory activity in a dream.
What is going on?
The official scientific name for this disease is "sleep apnea syndrome." It is expressed in violation of the functions of the respiratory center and stop, during sleep, breathing. This disease can manifest itself both in infancy and in any period of a person’s life. He brilliantly described how for the first time a person manifests Undina’s curse syndrome, Wisniewski is a popular Polish writer (a collection of short stories "Mistress").
When a patient falls asleep, for some reason his body does not perform an automatic function to regulate breathing, which is why a person cannot breathe on his own, and as a result, suffocation occurs, or as doctors call it - dysrhythmic hypoventilation. At such moments, the level of oxygen entering the body is significantly reduced, which inhibits the functions of most organs and systems, including the brain.
Who is affected?
Unlike other diseases that affect to a greater extent certain age or gender groups, people at almost any age may experience Undine's curse syndrome. In adults, it is really extremely rare, and mainly observed in infants and children.
This is explained by the fact that before, most patients simply did not live to adulthood, dying from respiratory arrest at an early age. Other types of
night apnea syndrome are more often observed in adult men, as a rule, who have crossed the 40th line, and in rare cases - in women.
What happens to the body?
How does the Undine Curse Syndrome — Night Apnea Syndrome — affect the human body? First of all, with a decrease in the level of oxygen in the blood, the cardiovascular system suffers. The heart muscle begins to contract faster, the blood vessels contract sharply, thereby raising blood pressure. In youth, when a person is still full of strength and the body is not affected by various ailments, all this goes unnoticed. At an older age, when the body is already quite "worn out", such nightly stresses can easily provoke a stroke or heart attack and even lead to death.
Types of respiratory arrest in a dream
Undine's syndrome is not the only violation of respiratory function in a dream. Doctors also distinguish other types of apnea:
- peripheral (obstructive);
- central;
- mixed.
Peripheral apnea is characterized by frequent, more than 15 cases per hour, respiratory arrest, the duration of which exceeds 10 seconds. In this type of apnea, the movement of air flow stops in the upper respiratory tract, which is why inhaled air does not enter the lungs. As a rule, such a respiratory failure occurs due to a violation of the passage of nerve impulses to the pharyngeal and respiratory muscles.
Central apnea occurs due to the fact that the respiratory tract does not receive the necessary activating impulse from the central nervous system (CNS). A similar condition develops, as a rule, as a result of severe pathological changes in the structure of the brain caused by injuries or diseases.
Signs of both peripheral and central apnea are observed with the so-called mixed type, which is often diagnosed in newborns and infants.
Symptoms
As a result of such a disorder as apnea (it doesn’t matter of a peripheral, central or mixed type), frequent both conscious and unconscious awakenings occur, the nature of the functioning of the heart and blood vessels changes. All this leads to the development of the following symptoms:
- high fatigue;
- a constant feeling of tiredness and lack of strength;
- morning headaches;
- decreased ability to concentrate and remember;
- emotional instability.
- problems falling asleep and insomnia;
- frequent awakenings;
- sweating;
- frequent urination.
In addition to the listed symptoms, as other organs and systems are damaged, new signs of disturbances in the body's activity will appear.
Root causes
Until the second half of the last century, scientists could not understand what causes Undina’s curse syndrome, the reasons for its occurrence were incomprehensible and mysterious. No one could answer the question of why perfectly healthy infants and young men, adult women and men suddenly died in their sleep from a stop of breathing. Only in the early 60s of the XX century, researchers R. Mitchell and J. Sevringaus managed to establish that this disease is a form of sleep apnea. This discovery helped scientists make a patient who has lost automatic control of breathing as a result of severe brain damage. As well as patients with Undine's syndrome, as soon as the patient fell asleep, he could not control the respiratory function and as a result began to suffocate. However, these studies could not answer the question of what causes such disorders in ordinary people.
Only in the XXI century, French researchers managed to establish the cause of this disease. As a result of a series of experiments, scientists found that the Thox2B gene is responsible for respiratory arrest in animals. Further sample studies of people with Undine syndrome confirmed the presence of the same gene in them. The second important discovery was that the gene mutation is not inherited, but occurs during the development of the embryo.
Undine's Curse Syndrome: Treatment
For a long time, in addition to connecting sick people at night to the breathing apparatus, there were no ways to resist this disease. In the past few years, in a number of European countries, such as Sweden, Germany, and some others, they began to implant into the brain, or rather the phrenic nerve, patients with the Undine syndrome special devices that “turn on” breathing when it stops. According to observations of the operated patients, they no longer experience any breathing problems at night or during the day.