ANYA, THE BABY WHO SLEEPS FOR HOURS BECAUSE OF ILLNESS

From Russia comes the Anya's desperate story, an 18 month old baby who sleep deeply for days in a row because of a rare disease called Kleini-Levin syndrome.

The doctors who treat her are trying to find the cause of this syndrome but while they continue to work, parents have decided to make their story public in order to find an expert in this disease who can help their daughter.

He taught his daughter to walk in his brief waking periods

Anya, in one of her episodes of deep and prolonged sleep

It all started when the little girl was six months old. His mother tells the British newspaper Daily Mirror that while Anya ate went into a deep sleep that was impossible to wake her. They took her to the emergency room but she continued sleeping there for another week.

When he finally woke up, he made him hungry and demanding food but soon he fell asleep again. Since then this little Russian baby, who is now 18 months old, comes to sleep for several days in a row and It only stays awake between 12 and 20 hours a week.

While she is sleeping, Anya does not go to the bathroom, nor does she eat or drink because the degree of deep sleep is such that it is impossible to wake her up. Her mother says that when she wakes up, the little girl has a fever, a red face and is very hungry, but still has managed to teach you to walk in the short periods of time you stay awake.

The doctors who attend her have done all kinds of tests, ruling out heart disease, genetic type, encephalitis, meningitis and epilepsy. Everything in it works correctly, so they have determined that what the little girl is suffering from is a type of rare disease known as Kleine-Levin syndrome, also nicknamed "sleeping beauty syndrome", of which, at the moment, the causes are unknown.

Kleine-Levin syndrome, a strange neurological disorder that makes you sleep for days

Kleine-Levin syndrome is a rare neurological disease that primarily affects men (68-78 percent of cases) and during adolescence (81 percent). It rarely manifests itself in women and very unusually occurs in babies.

It is characterized by a drowsiness that the patient cannot control and that leads him to sleep deeply for long periods of time. At a minimum, sleep episodes last 18 hours but sometimes they can be extended to days or even weeks

Along with the episodes of prolonged sleep can also occur behavioral changes, such as compulsive feeding, deterioration of mental abilities, hallucinations, disorientation or aggressiveness.

The cause or causes that produce this syndrome are still unknown., so that the families of those affected desperately seek a solution to this terrible and disabling disease, which usually lasts an average of 8-14 years.

In countries like the United Kingdom, parents of children affected by this syndrome created the KLS Support UK website in 2011, with the aim of helping affected people, supporting medical research and finding a cause and treatment.

And while Russian doctors continue to treat Anya and look for the cause of this disorder, her parents have wanted to make her story public in order to get specialized help that will end the nightmare that her daughter's life has become.