Screening Scale Flags Children, Adolescents With High Likelihood of Narcolepsy

The Pediatric Narcolepsy Screening Questionnaire achieved excellent performance in discriminating children with narcolepsy from children with other sleep problems and those with no sleep problems in a validation study published online ahead of print in Sleep Medicine.

“The scale identified children and adolescents with high likelihood of narcolepsy,” researchers reported.

Developed in response to the difficulty of identifying narcolepsy in children, the 11-item Pediatric Narcolepsy Screening Questionnaire is completed by caregivers of children with sleep issues.

The cross-sectional, observational study included 158 pediatric patients: 49 had clinician-confirmed narcolepsy, 55 had other sleep problems, and 54 had no sleep problems and were considered control subjects.

According to the study, the questionnaire demonstrated solid psychometric properties. Researchers reported good construct validity, unidimensionality, high item discriminative power for narcolepsy compared with control, and high internal consistency reliability.

Out of a possible 50, average total scores were 34.98 ± 7.98 for children with narcolepsy, 25.20 ± 9.43 for children with other sleep problems, and 9.54 ± 9.38 for children without sleep problems.

Researchers classified Pediatric Narcolepsy Screening Questionnaire total scores of 29 or higher as likely narcolepsy, 19 through 28 as likely other sleep problems, and 18 or below as narcolepsy unlikely.

Among patients with clinician-confirmed narcolepsy, the scale classified 79.6% as likely having narcolepsy, 18.4% as having other sleep problems, and 2% as having no sleep problems.

Reference:
Morris S, Plazzi G, de la Loge C, et al. Validation of the pediatric narcolepsy screening questionnaire (PNSQ): a cross-sectional, observational study. Sleep Med. Published online May 27, 2022. doi:10.1016/j.sleep.2022.05.017