A Case of Recurrent Hypersomnia

Recurrent hypersomnia is a disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of hypersomnia that typically occur weeks or months apart. We describe a 60-year-old woman with a four-year history of recurrent hypersomnia. Physical examinations, laboratory tests, and brain MRI showed no significant abnormality in the patient. Nocturnal polysomnographic study showed high sleep efficiency, absent sleep stage 3 and 4, and reduced sleep latency. The multiple sleep latency tests showed short sleep latency and five episodes of sleep-onset REM periods. This is the oldest known case of recurrent hypersomnia.