Earlier this month, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug designed to treat the root cause of narcolepsy, a condition that affects millions of people by causing extreme sleepiness during the day and wakefulness at night. The success of the drug, called oveporexton and marketed as Orzeyful, is being celebrated by those who struggle with narcolepsy. 'It's the best thing that has ever happened to me,' says Tyler Chapman, who volunteered for one of the clinical trials that contributed to the drug's approval. But it's also being watched with anticipation by researchers, who see it as the first in a line of therapies for sleep disorders that are likely to be approved in the coming years. These emerging treatments, known as orexin agonists, are exciting because they promise not just to alleviate symptoms of narcolepsy but also to target the disease's biological cause ' and might even have implications for other neuropsychiatric disorders. With this new strategy...
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