Feature Channels: Sleep

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A new frontier in the science of circadian rhythms – whose disruption is linked to major diseases like cancer and diabetes – suggests a previously unknown mechanism at work in our daily biological cycle.

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Hackensack Meridian Health is the first health system in New Jersey to offer an innovative new treatment option called Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation (UAS) therapy to help obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients. The implantable device is activated by a handheld remote.

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An analysis of Twitter data from the U.S. shows that social media usage largely mirrors daily work schedules and school calendars. The data reflect the amount of “social jet lag” caused when social demands make people wake up much earlier than their biological rhythms would prefer.

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Patients with centralized pain (fibromyalgia-like phenotype) are less likely to respond to a type of facet joint pain treatment called radiofrequency ablation (RFA), according to the results of a study from researchers at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI.

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Like humans, fruit flies are active during the day, sleep at night and have similar sleep characteristics. A study has discovered a new gene and uncovered a mechanism that modulates sleep by controlling the movement of taurine – a common ingredient found in many energy drinks like Red Bull™ – into neuron cells of the fly brain. Taurine also is abundant in the human brain and is consistently elevated in blood and urine of sleep-deprived people.

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Experimenting with mice, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have added to evidence that a hormone best known for helping regulate hunger and body weight might also ease breathing problems experienced during sleep more effectively when given through the nose.

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Researchers will gather today to discuss the potential for hibernation and the related process, torpor, to aid human health in spaceflight at the American Physiological Society’s (APS) Comparative Physiology: Complexity and Integration conference in New Orleans.

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How long a person with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) stops breathing may be a better predictor of mortality risk from OSA than the number of times they stop breathing, according to new research published online in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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Two decades ago, Clifford B. Saper, MD/PhD, Chairman of the Department of Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and colleagues discovered a set of nerve cells they thought might be the switch that turns the brain off, allowing it to sleep. In a new study, Saper and colleagues demonstrate in mice that that these cells – located in a region of the hypothalamus called the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus – are in fact essential to normal sleep.

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How many hours people sleep at night may affect their risk of stroke differently based on race, according to a study published in the October 3, 2018, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Researchers at Michigan State University conducted the largest experimentally controlled study on sleep deprivation to date, revealing just how detrimental operating without sleep can be in everything from bakers adding too much salt to cookies to surgeons botching surgeries.

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Rutgers researchers publish electronic health record assessment that can identify epilepsy patients at risk for obstructive sleep apnea

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In an evaluation of the safety and abuse research on the drug in hallucinogenic mushrooms, Johns Hopkins researchers suggest that if it clears phase III clinical trials, psilocybin should be re-categorized from a schedule I drug—one with no known medical potential—to a schedule IV drug such as prescription sleep aids, but with tighter control.

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In a study of 1,978 older adults publishing Sept. 21 in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers at Duke Health and the Duke Clinical Research Institute found people with irregular sleep patterns weighed more, had higher blood sugar, higher blood pressure, and a higher projected risk of having a heart attack or stroke within 10 years than those who slept and woke at the same times every day.

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Between 25 and 30% of children under the age of 18 in the United States do not get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation in children can lead to behavioral and mood problems that can negatively affect school performance, social interactions and physical wellbeing. Children from lower-middle-class families or families who live at or near the poverty line get less sleep and lower quality sleep than their peers from families with more income and resources. In a study that will be published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, researchers in the Arizona State University Department of Psychology have uncovered a potential mechanism that explains why children living in lower socioeconomic situations experience less and poorer sleep than their wealthier counterparts. The study is currently available online.

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A new guideline focused on the role of weight management in treating adult obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been published online by the American Thoracic Society in the Sept. 15 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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Fifty six percent of parents of teens who have sleep troubles believe this use of electronics is hurting their child’s shut-eye.

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While news media reporting traffic crashes and fire-related deaths of infants and children is routine and often leads to preventative measures to reduce these deaths, there is little or no news coverage of sleep-related or sudden infants deaths, which contributes to the lack of efforts to prevent these deaths, according to a Rush physician.

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Analysis of data captured during a long-term study of aging adults shows that those who report being very sleepy during the day were nearly three times more likely than those who didn’t to have brain deposits of beta amyloid, a protein that’s a hallmark for Alzheimer’s disease, years later.

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When medical marijuana is taken for chronic nerve pain, it may provide pain relief by reducing connections between the areas of the brain that process emotions and sensory signals, according to a study published in the September 5, 2018, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Canadian researchers writing in The Journal of Pain reported that fibromyalgia (FM) patients participating in online acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and treatment as usual (TAU) showed significant improvement in primary disease outcomes, such as depression, pain, sleep and pain acceptance, compared with TAU alone.

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After a stroke, most patients have sleep apnea. A University of Michigan-led clinical trial will investigate whether treating it right away will improve outcomes.

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Losing a single night’s sleep may affect the liver’s ability to produce glucose and process insulin, increasing the risk of metabolic diseases such as hepatic steatosis (fatty liver) and type 2 diabetes. The findings of the mouse study are published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology—Endocrinology and Metabolism. The research was chosen as an APSselect article for September.

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Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say new experiments using magnetic pulse brain stimulation on people with moderate to severe restless legs syndrome (RLS) have added to evidence that the condition is due to excitability and hyperarousal in the part of the brain's motor cortex responsible for leg movement.

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A new study by Case Western Reserve researchers at the School of Dental Medicine found that about 7 percent of children between ages 9 and 17 in orthodontic care were at high risk for sleep-disordered breathing.

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People with prediabetes who go to bed later, eat meals later and are more active and alert later in the day — those who have an “evening preference” — have higher body mass indices compared with people with prediabetes who do things earlier in the day, or exhibit morning preference. The higher BMI among people with evening preference is related to their lack of sufficient sleep, according to a University of Illinois at Chicago-led study.

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Researchers studying the link between sleep apnea and heart disease have found a new mechanism: lipid clearance from the blood is slower in people with apnea, predisposing them to heart disease. Fortunately, CPAP treatment seems to improve matters.

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Summer is the season of barbeque, beach trips, and some of the simplest joys of life, but if you’re not careful, it can also be the lone enemy of one of the most important joys of them all: sleep.

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Sleep-related infant deaths are associated with bed-sharing, sleeping position, poverty and other factors

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Research from the University of South Australia confirms that sleep timing and sleep quality can influence the dietary behaviours of school-aged children, causing them to skip breakfast and eat more junk food, both warning signs of poor nutrition.

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Children, like adults, need quality sleep in order to function well. But, when a child sleepwalks, parents often worry about how this might impact their child’s development and behaviour. In a new study by the University of South Australia, researchers have explored the prevalence of sleepwalking in school children and its relationship with broader sleep and daytime difficulties.

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How much sleep mothers get when they are pregnant can impact on the health of their growing baby, according to a new scoping study conducted by the University of South Australia.

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Supplemental oxygen eliminates the rise in morning blood pressure experienced by obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients who stop using continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), the standard treatment for OSA, according to new research published online in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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Settling youngsters down to sleep at night isn't always easy. Recent research suggests that the amount of exposure children have to bright light in the hour leading up to bedtime

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Researchers are working on this collaborative project that utilizes genomic and transgenic technology in Mexican cavefish to identify genetic loci that contribute to sleep, feeding, and metabolism.

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To get your young scholar off to a good start this school year, it’s important to make sure he or she is well-rested when the bell sounds, according to Reeba Mathew, M.D., a sleep expert with McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas of Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

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Travel by airplane has opened the door to experiencing different cultures and exploring natural wonders. That is, if you can get past the jet lag. But what if you could take control of the brain's daily timing system? Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis unlocked a cure for jet lag in mice by activating a small subset of the neurons involved in setting daily rhythms, as reported in a July 12 advance online publication of Neuron.

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Living at higher latitudes, where there is also less sunlight, could result in a higher prevalence rate of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

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Chemical messengers in the brain regulate sleep, opiate craving

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Dr. Kyran Quinlan and colleagues at Rush issue an urgent call for prevention strategies for sleep-related infant deaths in his viewpoint, “Protecting Infants From Sleep-Related Deaths” published in the June 18 online issue of JAMA Pediatrics.

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The lazy days of summer can be peaceful and relaxing, but they can also wreak havoc on your body’s internal clock -- and throw even the most conscientious family’s sleep schedules out of whack.

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A Loyola Medicine study is providing further evidence that floppy eyelids may be a sign of sleep apnea. The study found that 53 percent of sleep apnea patients had upper eyelids that were lax and rubbery.

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We’ve all experienced going to bed tired and waking up refreshed, yet how that happens at the molecular level remains a mystery. An international study published today in Nature sheds new light on the biochemistry of sleep need in the brain.

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When they were played recordings of their mothers reading children’s books, babies in the NICU slept better and woke up less often, according to a new abstract presented at this week’s annual meeting for Sleep Medicine hosted by the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

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For adults with diabetes, managing the disease is a day-in, day-out effort to control the factors that affect blood sugar levels. A team of scientists, including two West Virginia University professors, is researching how one aspect of a patient’s daily routine could help keep blood sugar levels within a specific range.

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About 25 percent of Americans experience acute insomnia each year, but about 75 percent of these individuals recover without developing persistent poor sleep or chronic insomnia, according to a study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania which will be presented Monday at SLEEP 2018, the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS).

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Penn study reveals that microRNAs predict differences in cognitive impairment in memory and attention after sleep deprivation