Author Interviews, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders / 22.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Summer Sherburne Hawkins, PhD, MS Assistant Professor Boston College School of Social Work Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Sleep is so important for all of us—especially for children and adolescents as their brains and bodies continue to develop. Inadequate sleep is associated with a number of health problems including obesity, cognitive functioning, and chronic illnesses. Increasing the amount and quality of sleep are public health priorities in the US. Currently, school-aged children are recommended to get at least 10 hours and adolescents to get 9-10 hours of sleep daily. However, less than one third of students report getting 8 or more hours of sleep during the school week and total sleep time decreases from infancy through adulthood. The new Healthy People 2020 ‘Sleep Health’ target only monitors adolescent sleep and there are no national data for younger children. Thus, there is little known about the age that sleep issues may begin and whether the prevalence of sleep issues is changing over time. Furthermore, only a few studies have examined the social determinants of sleep in children and adolescents, particularly whether there are differences across racial/ethnic and educational groups. An overarching gap in the literature remains—monitoring sleep and identifying disparities across the life course. Using a nationally-representative sample of US children and adolescents, we examined trends and social determinants of inadequate sleep in 6-17-year-olds. (more…)
Aging, Author Interviews, Blood Pressure - Hypertension, Melatonin / 19.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Denis Gubin The Tyumen Medical University Tyumen, Russia MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Dr. Gubin: The older we get, the more likely our circadian rhythms are disrupted. For example, blood pressure, BP, not only tends to increase but as well become more irregular. One of the possible causes is an age-dependent deficit of endogenous melatonin production. We have shown that exogenous melatonin helps to ameliorate both trends – lowers  blood pressure and also stabilizes and synchronizes blood pressure and heart rate variability. (more…)
Author Interviews, Blood Pressure - Hypertension, Lifestyle & Health, Sleep Disorders / 15.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Wisit Cheungpasitporn, MD, Nephrology Fellow Project mentor: Stephen B. Erickson, MD Departments of Nephrology and Hypertension Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Cheungpasitporn: The prevention and management of hypertension continue to be major public health challenges. Studies have shown the benefits of napping, including reduction of fatigue and improvement of alertness, mood and work performance. However, there have also been increasing reported associations between napping and cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, strokes, and higher mortality from all causes. The risk of hypertension in adults who regularly take a nap is controversial. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders, Weight Research / 11.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ofir Turel, Ph.D Professor, Information Systems and Decision Sciences California State University, Fullerton Scholar in Residence, Department of Psychology University of Southern California MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Turel: The study emerged as a response to the growing societal concern regarding potentially problematic information system use” lifestyles”, including videogame addiction, among adolescents. Much research in this domain has focused on negative psychological (e.g., reduced wellbeing, depression) and social/life functioning (e.g., reduction in normal activities, diminished school performance). Less is known regarding potential physiological outcomes of videogame addiction. Interestingly, the increase in videogame addiction-like symptoms among adolescents happened in conjunction with an increase in sleep curtailment and obesity in this population. These are too growing concerns in North America and perhaps elsewhere. Medical research implies that these three phenomena may be related. Hence, we hypothesized that videogame addiction will be associated with increased sleep curtailment and increased abdominal adiposity; and consequently, indirectly, with cardio-metabolic deficits. Our findings suggest that videogame addiction predicts reduced sleep duration which in turn, predicts increased abdominal adiposity. Abdominal adiposity was associated with increased blood pressure, insulin resistance and triglycerides and reduced high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. Hence, sleep curtailment is an important mediating factor that helps translating videogame addiction into cardio-metabolic deficiencies. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pediatrics, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders / 09.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Anna Pease Senior Research Associate University of Bristol MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Pease:  We tried to gather evidence of whether there was an association between swaddling for sleep and SIDS. This was a review, not a new original study, but it is the first time these data have been brought together to try to quantify any risk between swaddling and SIDS. We only found 4 studies and they were quite different making it difficult to pool the results. We did find, however, that the risk of SIDS when placing infants on their side or front for sleep increased when infants were swaddled. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders / 09.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jean-Philippe Chaput, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Ottawa Research Scientist, Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute Ontario, Canada MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Chaput: Folklore has associated behaviors of animals and humans, and even werewolves, to moon phases of the lunar cycle. However, the empirical evidence that the moon exerts an influence on behaviors is weak and very limited. In order to verify if the full moon is associated with sleep and physical activity of children (and possibly debunk this myth), we used a 12-country study involving 5,812 participants and providing 33,710 24-hour accelerometer recordings of sleep and activity behaviors. Overall, we observed that sleep duration was 5 minutes (1%) shorter at full moon compared to new moon, while activity behaviors were not significantly associated with the lunar cycle in this global sample of children drawn from all inhabited continents. However, the magnitude of this effect on sleep duration is unlikely to be clinically significant from a public health standpoint and people should stop worrying about the full moon. (more…)
Author Interviews, Blood Pressure - Hypertension, Insomnia, Sleep Disorders / 28.04.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Haicong Li Director and Professor, Department of Geriatrics China-Japan Friendship Hospital Beijing, China.  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Based on our clinical observations over the years, we noticed two common phenomena:
  • One is that the occurrence of hypertension in patients with chronic sleep disorders tend to be higher than those with normal sleep conditions;
  • The other is that the blood pressure of some hypertensive patients cannot be lowered to normal level even with anti-hypertensive treatments, of which group many have sleep disorders.
So we hypothesized that the improvement of insomnia can effectively help lower the of hypertensive patients and the combination of anti-hypertensive medication and sedative-hypnotic drugs can achieve better therapeutic effects. In our experiment, a total of 402 patients with a diagnosis of insomnia and hypertension were selected and randomly divided into two groups. The treatment group (202 cases) received standard antihypertensive treatment with Estazolam and the control group (200 cases) received standard antihypertensive treatment with placebo. We measured the sedentary diastolic (SiSBP) and systolic blood pressure (SiDBP) before the treatment and every 7 days during the experiment. To assess the sleep quality and anxiety and depression levels of patients, we reported the scores of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAMA) and the Hamilton Depression Scale-17 (HAMD 17) at the same time points. At the conclusion of the experiment, PSQI, HAMA, and HAMD17 scores were significantly lower than those of the control group (P<0.001). The insomnia treatment efficacy of Estazolam in the treatment group was 67.3%, significantly higher than that (14.0%) of the control group (P < 0.001). The blood pressure of the treatment group showed significant improvement throughout the experiment. By Day 28, the decrease of SiSBP and SiDBP in the treatment group was significantly greater than that of the control group (SiSBP: 10.5±3.9 vs. 3.4±2.5; DiSBP: 8.1±3.6 vs. 2.7±2.1, mmHg, P<0.001) and the compliance rate of goal BP (<140/90 mmHg) was 74.8% with Estazolam, compared to 50.5% with placebo (P<0.001). Thus, our findings indicated that the improvement of insomnia can significantly help lower the blood pressure in hypertensive patients. (more…)
Author Interviews, Sleep Disorders, Stanford / 27.04.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Maurice M. Ohayon, MD, DSc, PhD Chief of the Division of Public Mental Health and Population Sciences Director of the Stanford Sleep Epidemiology Research Centre (SSERC) John-Arrillaga PI & Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences School of Medicine, Stanford University Palo Alto, CA 94303  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Ohayon: Artificial Lights at night are known to be powerful disruptors of the normal sleep/wake cycle. Light exposure at night acts on suppressing and delaying melatonin secretion and exciting the central nervous system. In this study we focused on the effects of the outdoor lights at night, (such as street lights and lights, outdoor light fixtures and advertising boards) as measured at nighttime by satellite observations. We analyzed the sleep habits of a representative sample of the American general population that had been interviewed with the artificial intelligence system Sleep-EVAL. We found that individuals living in areas at high level of radiance, such as can be found in the downtowns of metropolitan areas, have a delayed bedtime, delayed wake up time and, overall, shorter sleep duration, than people living in areas with low nighttime radiance. (more…)
Author Interviews, Nutrition, Sleep Disorders / 22.04.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Yingting Cao PhD Candidate Population Research and Outcome Studies School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences The University of Adelaide Freemasons Foundation Centre for Men’s Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: As sleep complains have reached a public concern, increasing number studies have investigated it. Most studies focused on the adverse effect of short sleep or poor sleep quality on health but fewer looked it the other way around. Laboratory studies have suggested the potential role of diet in regulating sleep, however, it has not been confirmed in population studies. So, we examined whether dietary factors are associated with sleep in a large cohort of middle-aged and older men in Adelaide, focusing on their sleep, as well as general health including chronic conditions. In this particular paper, we focused on macronutrient intake (we focused on nutrients and food levels in other papers) and sleep. The main finding was that comparing with the lowest 25% fat intake (mean 58g/d), people in the highest 25% of fat intake reported more daytime sleepiness and had increased number of sleep apnea during the night. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, CDC, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders / 07.04.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Anne G. Wheaton, Ph.D. Epidemiologist Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Division of Population Health Epidemiology and Surveillance Branch Atlanta, GA  30341-3717  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Wheaton: Unintentional injury, mostly from motor vehicle crashes, is the leading cause of death for adolescents. Adolescents who do not get enough sleep are at an increased risk for motor vehicle crashes and other unintentional injury, such as sports injuries and occupational injuries. We evaluated the association between self-reported sleep duration on an average school night and several injury-related risk behaviors (infrequent bicycle helmet use, infrequent seatbelt use, riding with a driver who had been drinking, drinking and driving, and texting while driving) among more than 50 thousand US high school students. The likelihood of each of five injury-related risk behaviors (infrequent bicycle helmet use, infrequent seatbelt use, riding with a driver who had been drinking, drinking and driving, and texting while driving) was significantly higher for students sleeping ≤7 hours on an average school night compared with 9 hours. Infrequent seatbelt use, riding with a drinking driver, and drinking and driving were also more likely for students sleeping ≥10 hours compared to 9 hours on an average school night. Although short and long sleep may simply be associated with other adolescent risk behaviors, insufficient sleep may cause individuals to take more risks and disregard the possibility of negative consequences. However, the study was cross-sectional, meaning the students were asked questions at one time point, so it is not possible to determine if there is a cause and effect association between sleep and these risk behaviors. Insufficient sleep may contribute to injury risk directly by slowing reaction time, impairing ability to pay attention, or causing a driver to fall asleep, but these results provide evidence that some of the increased risk associated with insufficient sleep might be due to engaging in injury-related risk behaviors. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Obstructive Sleep Apnea / 21.03.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Stefanos N. Kales, MD, MPH, FACP, FACOEM  Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School & Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health Director, Occupational Medicine Residency Division Chief OEM, Cambridge Health Alliance MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? Dr. Kales: Up to 20% of all large truck crashes are due to drowsy or fatigued driving, which would account for almost 9,000 fatalities and up to 220,000 serious injuries. OSA is the most common medical cause of excessive daytime sleepiness or fatigue, and has been linked with negative impacts on attention, working memory, vigilance, and executive functioning. Past studies primarily of passenger car drivers have linked untreated OSA with a several-fold increased risk of motor vehicle accidents. They have also shown that effective treatment with CPAP reduces this risk close to that of unaffected drivers. Although commercial truck drivers undergo a biennial examination to determine their medical fitness to safely operate a vehicle, there are currently no mandatory standards for OSA screening or diagnosis, in part because there have been no large-scale studies evaluating the crash risk of commercial drivers diagnosed with OSA. Our study examined the results of the first large-scale employer program to screen, diagnose, and monitor OSA treatment adherence in the U.S. trucking industry  (more…)
Author Interviews, Diabetes, Pulmonary Disease, Sleep Disorders / 15.03.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jonathan Shaw MD, FRACP, FRCP (UK), FAAHMS Associate Professor Domain Head, Population Health Research Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute Melbourne VIC 3004 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Shaw: Over the last decade or so, there has been a lot of research connecting obstructive sleep apnoea with type 2 diabetes. They co-exist very frequently in the same individual, they are both much more common in overweight and obese people than in people of healthy weights, both improve with weight loss, and both are associated with other conditions such as hypertension and heart disease. In addition, there has been evidence that some of the key abnormalities occurring in sleep apnoea (in particular, fragmented sleep and intermittent low oxygen levels) may have a direct effect on glucose metabolism, and increase blood sugar levels. This led many people to suspect that untreated sleep apnoea might be one reason that type 2 diabetes is hard to control, and that treating sleep apnoea in people with type 2 diabetes would improve their blood sugar control. We, therefore, undertook a large trial among people with type 2 diabetes, and previously unrecognised sleep apnoea, in which participants were randomised to either a group receiving specific treatment for sleep apnoea (continuous positive airways pressure, or CPAP, therapy at night) or to a control group. Over the six months of the trial, we saw no benefit of CPAP therapy in regard to blood sugar control (as measured by HbA1c). Even when we looked at sub-groups with worse blood sugar control at the start or worse sleep apnoea or who did the best in terms of using CPAP every night, there was still no sign of benefit on blood sugar control. We did, however, see some other benefits of CPAP therapy, with less daytime sleepiness, improvements in quality of life and lower diastolic blood pressure. (more…)
Author Interviews, Genetic Research, Sleep Disorders / 28.02.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alice Gregory PhD Department of Psychology Goldsmiths, University of London London, UK Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Gregory: Sleep paralysis involves a total inability to move just as someone is falling asleep or waking up. This experience typically ends within seconds to minutes and is not usually a sign of any wider problem – yet it can be extremely frightening. This is in part because this experience is often accompanied by hallucinations. To understand what is happening during episode of sleep paralysis it is useful to understand that there are different stages of sleep. One distinction is between Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep. During REM sleep the body is paralysed. Dreaming often occurs during REM sleep, so it has been proposed that this paralysis keeps us safe, by preventing us from ‘acting out our dreams’. During an episode of sleep paralysis, someone may have woken up but has retained certain features of REM sleep (specifically the paralysis and sometimes dream-related hallucinations). While sleep paralysis is rather common and the public seem incredibly interested in learning more about this, it is surprising that there is such little research on this topic. Certain risk factors for sleep paralysis have been proposed previously, such as experiencing stress. However, those suffering from this experience are keen for more information, which is currently unavailable. For this reason, we wanted to see whether we could identify other factors which were associated with sleep paralysis. Furthermore, in reviewing the literature, we were stunned that while it seems obvious that genetic differences between people are likely to be important in explaining why certain people experience sleep paralysis and others do not – there was almost no work on this topic. We decided to investigate this further as well. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Cognitive Issues, NYU, OBGYNE, Sleep Disorders / 27.02.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Donald A. Wilson, Ph.D. Professor, Departments of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Neuroscience & Physiology NYU Langone Medical Center Senior Research Scientist Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Wilson: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is characterized by cognitive, emotional and behavioral problems that are life-long.  Generally, it is assumed that the initial trauma of alcohol exposure at a critical time in life is the cause of these problems.  In this study using an animal model of FASD, we find that developmental alcohol causes a life-long disturbance in sleep.  Given that sleep is important for memory and emotion, among other things, this suggests that developmental alcohol can produce a daily insult to the brain, far outlasting that initial exposure.  Each night, the brain is unable to store memories, adjust emotional circuits, remove waste products, in the way that it should, because FASD has disrupted sleep. (more…)
Author Interviews, Sleep Disorders / 11.02.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Helen J. Burgess, Ph.D. Professor, Departments of Behavioral Sciences & Internal Medicine Director, Biological Rhythms Research Laboratory Director, Center for Clinical Chronobiology Rush University Medical Center Chicago IL 60612  Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Burgess: The 24 hour circadian clock in the brain has a profound influence on mental and physical health.  Circadian rhythm sleep disorders occur when the internal circadian clock’s timing is out of synch with the external social world, which often dictates when we should eat, work and sleep.  One such disorder, delayed sleep phase disorder, occurs when the circadian clock runs too late relative to social time. Patients with delayed sleep phase disorder can appear to simply have insomnia, but careful measurement of their circadian timing can reveal the underlying circadian cause. Also, the treatment of delayed sleep phase disorder with either bright light and/or melatonin can be optimized by knowing a patient’s circadian timing, because the effect of these treatments can vary widely depending on when they are administered. A problem in the sleep and circadian field is that the gold standard marker of circadian timing in humans, the dim light melatonin onset (DLMO), is typically only measured in the clinic or laboratory.  Many clinics do not even measure the DLMO. Our group recently developed a home saliva collection kit to assist people in measuring their DLMO at home.  Previously, we found the home DLMOs compared very well to laboratory DLMOs in healthy controls.  In this paper, we extended this work to show the kit also works well in patients with delayed sleep phase disorder. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Diabetes, Diabetologia, Sleep Disorders / 29.01.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Yanping Li Research Scientist Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health Boston, MA 02115

Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Li: Sleeping difficulty is a common disorder but always lack of attention from both the patients and physicians. Our study finds that women with sleeping difficulty is associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. (more…)
Author Interviews, Columbia, Nutrition, Sleep Disorders / 20.01.2016

More on Sleep on MedicalResearch.com MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Ph.D, FAHA Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center Institute of Human Nutrition College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University New York, NY 10032   Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. St-Onge: We have shown that sleep affects food intake: restricting sleep increases energy intake, particularly from fat (others also find increased sugar intake).  We wanted to know if the reverse was also true: does diet affect sleep at night? Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report? Dr. St-Onge: Diet quality can play an important role in sleep quality.  Sleep can be affect after only a single day of poor dietary intakes (high saturated fat and low fiber intakes).  It is possible that improving one’s diet can also improve their sleep. (more…)
Author Interviews, Neurological Disorders, Sleep Disorders / 19.01.2016

More on Sleep Research on MedicalResearch.com MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Andrew Lim MD, FRCPC Assistant Professor Neurology Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Toronto, ON Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Lim: Our group had previously shown that sleep fragmentation is associated with an increased risk of dementia and cognitive decline.  However, there were gaps in what we knew about underlying brain changes that may link sleep fragmentation with these neurological outcomes.  Experiments in mice and other animals suggested that damage to blood vessels may be one potential mechanism. In this study of 315 older individuals who had their sleep measured using wrist-watch like accelerometers, we found that individuals who had the most fragmented sleep were also more likely to have more severe damage to brain blood vessels and blood-vessel related brain injury at death. (more…)
Author Interviews, Heart Disease, Sleep Disorders / 11.01.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sunil Sharma MD, FAASM Associate Professor of Medicine Director, Pulmonary Sleep Medicine Associate Director, Jefferson Sleep Disorders Center Thomas Jefferson University and Hospitals Philadelphia, PA 19107 Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Sharma: Congestive heart failure (CHF) is the most common cause of hospital admission and readmissions in United States. More health care dollars are spent on CHF than any other diagnosis. A large chunk of this cost is due to hospital admission.  An estimated 50% of the CHF patients are readmitted within 6 months of discharge. The recent Protection Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposes penalties on hospitals for readmissions within first 30-days. It is therefore imperative to find ways to impact the natural history of the disease. Sleep disordered breathing is a common disorder associated with CHF. It is estimated that up to 70% of the patient with CHF may have SDB. Studies have shown that untreated SDB can worsen CHF and treatment of Sleep disordered breathing has been shown to improve heart function (ejection fraction).  (more…)
Author Interviews, Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Vitamin D / 24.12.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ken M. Kunisaki , MD Associate Professor of Medicine Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine University of Minnesota  Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Kunisaki : Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a very common condition that is the result of recurrent complete or partial closure of the upper airway during sleep.  OSA leads to poor sleep quality and excessive daytime sleepiness. A previous study suggested that OSA is more common in the winter, but there were no vitamin D measurements in that study, which seemed potentially relevant since many people have lower vitamin D levels in the winter, due to less sunlight exposure in the winter.  Several studies have also shown that people with low vitamin D levels have worse muscle function.  Since muscles are partially responsible for keeping the upper airway open during sleep, we wondered whether people with low vitamin D levels might have weaker upper airway muscles and therefore be more prone to having OSA. In our study, we found that indeed, persons with OSA had lower vitamin D levels than those without OSA, but this was explained by obesity.  In other words, the low vitamin D levels seen in OSA patients is likely just a marker of obesity and not likely related to the presence or absence of OSA. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Surgical Research, UCLA / 29.11.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Soroush Zaghi, MD Department of Head and Neck Surgery David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA University of California, Los Angeles MedicalResearch: What is the central message for clinicians and surgeons from your results? Dr. Zaghi: Multiple studies from different practitioners and institutions agree that Maxillomandibular Advancement (MMA) is a highly effective surgical option for patients with obstructive sleep apnea who cannot tolerate positive pressure therapy and have not found success with other surgical procedures. (more…)
Author Interviews, Dermatology, JAMA, Melatonin, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders / 23.11.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Prof. Bor-Luen Chiang Vice Superintendent, National Taiwan University Hospital Professor of Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine and Pediatrics National Taiwan University Attending Physician, Department of Medical research National Taiwan University Hospital and Yung-Sen Chang, MD MPH Attending physician, Department of Pediatrics, Taipei City Hospital Renai Br. Adjunct Attending Physician, Department of Pediatrics National Taiwan University Children’s Hospital Adjunct Instructor, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Prof. Chang: Sleep disturbance is a common disorder in the children with atopic dermatitis (AD) (reported in 47 to 60%), but no effective way of managing this problem had been established. In our preceding study, we found that lower nocturnal melatonin level was significantly associated with sleep disturbance in the patients with AD. Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland which plays an important role in sleep regulation. In addition to sleep-inducing effects, melatonin also has anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties which might be helpful for the management o fatopic dermatitis. Furthermore, melatonin has an excellent safety profile with minimal adverse effects, making it a good choice for children. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate whether melatonin is effective for improving the sleep problems and the dermatitis severity in children with atopic dermatitis. Medical Research: What are the main findings? Prof. Chang: From our double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study, we found that after melatonin treatment, the sleep onset latency shortened by 21.4 minutes compared with placebo (from a mean of 44.9 minutes to 21.6 minutes). The Scoring Atopic Dermatitis Index (higher scores representing more severe dermatitis) also decreased by 9.9 compared with placebo (from a mean of 49.1 to 40.2). No adverse events were reported throughout the study. (more…)
Author Interviews, Gender Differences, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders / 17.11.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sabine Plancoulaine, MD, PhD Senior Researcher NSERM, UMR1153 Epidemiology and Statistics Sorbonne Paris Cité Research Center (CRESS), early Origin of the Child's Health And Development (ORCHAD) Team, Villejuif, France; and Paris Descartes University, Paris, France Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Plancoulaine: A decrease in children’s total sleep duration has been reported in the last decades, suggesting that more and more children are now in chronic sleep debt. There is now accumulating evidence that insufficient quantity and/or quality of sleep have a negative impact on children’s physical and mental health development, cognitive function, behaviour and academic success. Sleep disorders and short sleep duration in childhood have also been suggested as predictors of sleep disorders and short sleep duration in adolescence and adulthood. An increased risk of obesity has been shown among shorter sleeper children, especially boys.  Medical Research: What are the main findings? Dr. Plancoulaine: In our study we aimed at describing sleep duration in 3 years old children from a French pre-birth cohort (546 boys and 482 girls) and at investigating gender-specific factors associated with shorter sleep duration defined as <12h/24h. In our study, children aged 3 years slept on average 12hrs35 and 91% of them were napping. Parental presence when falling asleep (e.g. holding hands) was the only factor associated with shorter sleep duration in both gender and increased the risk by around 3 and 4 in boys and girls respectively. The other associated risk factors were more gender-specific. Among boys, each hour of TV viewing duration increased by 72% the risk of being a short sleeper and each additional standard deviation of BMI increased the risk by 31%. Among girls, adherence to a fruit and vegetables dietary pattern divided the risk of being short sleeper by 2 while being cared at home increased it by 2.5 folds. Other investigated factors were not associated (i.e. familial incomes, parental educational level, maternal age at birth, maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, maternal depression status (at birth and at 3y), gestational age, child’s birth rank, birth weight and physical activities at 3y, existence of night awakenings at 3y). (more…)
Author Interviews, Nutrition, Sleep Disorders / 05.11.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mike C Parent, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Counseling Psychology Texas Tech University Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Parent: There is some research out there on energy drinks, and we know a few things about them. For instance, although the drinks are marketed as though they are for extreme sports athletes, most people who drink them are not athletes. It seems as though drinking them makes some men feel as though they are a part of that extreme sports culture, without even needing to participate in the sports, though. The other part was that, clinically, you would be amazed at how many young men present at student counseling centers and university medical centers with "sleep problems." Then, when you ask them about what they eat and drink during a day, it turns out that some of them are guzzling half a dozen of these drinks a day, or drinking them at night, totally unaware of the extremely high caffeine content. It's true that energy drinks can help people focus a but better or work out a bit harder--but that's because the active ingredient is caffeine. In this research, we aimed to marry together those two lines of work--how does wanting to be more masculine impact energy drink use, and what consequences might energy drink use have for something as basic as sleep hygiene? (more…)
Author Interviews, Heart Disease, Sleep Disorders / 18.09.2015

Dr Manolis Kallistratos MD,PhD FESC,EHS Cardiologist at Asklepieion Voula General Hospital Athens, Greece MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Manolis Kallistratos MD,PhD FESC,EHS Cardiologist at Asklepieion Voula General Hospital Athens, Greece  Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr Kallistratos: We all know that lifestyle changes represent the cornerstone of treatment of arterial hypertension. Lifestyle changes include restriction of salt and alcohol, physical activity, smoking cessation and weight loss. On the other hand, we know that many individuals especially the elders are sleeping at noon. Unfortunately there are few studies assessing mid-day sleep. A study in healthy individuals affirmed that sleeping at noon resulted in a decrease of 12% of the relative risk of coronary mortality in healthy subjects.  So the question regarding this habit is: Is it only a custom, a behavioral adaptation or is it also beneficial? Should mid-day sleep be included in the life style changes suggested by the doctors in patients with arterial hypertension? because we all know that nowadays is almost a privilege for a few due to the “nine to five” working culture, and the intense daily routine. For this purpose we prospectively studied 386 middle-aged patients (200 males and 186 females) from our outpatient hypertensive clinic. We observed that hypertensive patients that slept at noon presented lower pulse wave velocity levels (less stiff arteries), lower daytime and nighttime as well as average systolic blood pressure levels (24-hours SBP) . In general mid-day sleep decreased systolic blood pressure levels (during 24 hours) for approximately 6 mm of Hg. 60 minutes of mid-day sleep, decreased average SBP in our patients for about 4 mmHg. In addition, there was a trend, patients who slept at noon to be under fewer medications. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders / 15.09.2015

Ana C. Krieger, MD, MPH, FCCP, FAASM Medical Director, Center for Sleep Medicine Associate Clinical Professor Departments of Medicine, Neurology and Genetic Medicine Weill Cornell Medical College - Cornell University Associate Attending NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Rockefeller University HospitalMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ana C. Krieger, MD, MPH, FCCP, FAASM Medical Director, Center for Sleep Medicine Associate Clinical Professor Departments of Medicine, Neurology and Genetic Medicine Weill Cornell Medical College - Cornell University Associate Attending NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Rockefeller University Hospital   Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Krieger: For many years, sleep researchers have been concerned about sleep deprivation in adolescents. Our study shows that high school students have shorter sleep duration on the nights following the spring Daylight Saving Time adjustment. This sleep loss was associated with a decline in daytime vigilance and cognitive performance on the week following DST. (more…)
Author Interviews, Melatonin, Multiple Sclerosis / 12.09.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Mauricio F. Farez Center for Research on Neuroimmunological Diseases (CIEN) Raúl Carrea Institute for Neurological Research (FLENI) Buenos Aires, Argentina Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Farez: We were intrigued by our initial observation that Multiple Sclerosis (MS) relapses have a clear seasonal occurrence with less relapses during fall and winter. We found that melatonin levels (a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the absence of light) have an inverse correlation with Multiple Sclerosis relapses. Moreover, melatonin controls the generation of pathogenic Th17 cells, while it boosts the generation of regulatory Tr1 cells. By affecting the immune balance of those cells it may prevents the occurrence of relapse. Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report? Dr. Farez: Melatonin and drugs alike targeting its pathways may be a future alternative in Multiple Sclerosis  treatment. Until a proper clinical trial is conducted, melatonin SHOULD NOT be used as Multiple Sclerosis therapy. I would like to emphasize this, because melatonin is a complex hormone with receptors present basically in every cell. We do not know yet the dosage and administration form needed to obtain similar effects as the one observed in our in vitro and animal studies. (more…)
Author Interviews, Insomnia, Psychological Science / 12.09.2015

Markus Jansson-Fröjmark PhD Associate professor, clinical psychologist Department of Psychology Stockholm University MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Markus Jansson-Fröjmark PhD Associate professor, clinical psychologist Department of Psychology Stockholm University   Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: There is ample evidence suggesting that how people regulate their emotions might influence several types of psychopathology, including anxiety and mood disorders. The purpose of our longitudinal investigation was therefore to examine the association between emotion regulation and how insomnia develops over time. Our main finding was that people whose ability to regulate their emotions had diminished were more likely to develop insomnia and that it was more likely to be persistent. A reduced ability to regulate emotions was associated with an 11% increased risk of developing a new bout of insomnia or reporting persistent insomnia. For anyone that has to deal with insomnia on a daily basis, they may find that is can effect a large part of their lives. Sleep is important for even, as it allows us all to function properly throughout the day. When it comes to Insomnia, there is medication out there that people can take that may help them with this issue. A popular method of treatment is through the use of medical marijuana. If this is something that you have been planning on trying, you would need to obtain your medical marijuana card in Cincinnati (if you live in this city) before you could start receiving product. Hopefully this will help with your insomnia and provide you with a better quality of sleep. (more…)
AHA Journals, Author Interviews, Heart Disease, Sleep Disorders / 12.09.2015

Chan-Won Kim, M.D. Clinical Associate Professor Center for Cohort Studies Kangbuk Samsun Hospital Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine Seoul, South KoreaMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Chan-Won Kim, M.D. Clinical Associate Professor Center for Cohort Studies Kangbuk Samsun Hospital Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine Seoul, South Korea Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Chan-Won Kim: In modern society, inadequate sleep either in quantity or in quality is a common problem and widely recognized as a potential determinant of adverse health outcomes including cardiovascular health. Very long or very short duration of sleep are associated with an increased risk for clinical cardiovascular events such as coronary heart disease and strokes. In these previous studies, however, it was possible that extreme sleep duration or poor sleep quality was a consequence of previous co-morbidities such as depression and obesity, and it was still unclear if these co-morbidities were really responsible for the effects of sleep disturbances. Therefore, we evaluated the association of sleep duration and quality with early markers of subclinical arterial disease in asymptomatic apparently healthy men and women. Medical Research: What are the main findings? Dr. Chan-Won Kim:  In our study, we found that sleep duration had a U-shaped association with two early markers of vascular disease. Both short and long sleep duration were associated with a greater amount of calcification in the coronary arteries, a very good measure of subclinical atherosclerosis that predicts the risk of a heart attack. We also found a similar pattern of association with arterial stiffness, a marker of vascular aging. For both markers, we found the lowers risk in study participants who reported 7 hours of sleep. In addition, poor subjective sleep quality was also associated with these markers of vascular disease. Few studies had explored these associations before, and they were inconsistent partly because of small sample sizes. Our research also indicates that these associations were present irrespective of traditional risk factors such as hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, or diabetes. (more…)