Sleeping In School

Up to 10% of children starting school suffer from sleep disturbances and these may lead to poor performance or behavioral difficulties. In the current edition of Deutsches Arzteblatt International, the child and adolescent psychiatrist Gerd Lehmkuhl and his colleagues present the results of a study from Cologne, Germany. The authors have as yet interviewed 1388 children starting school and their parents from all parts of Cologne. Read more ...

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A study in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that the use of light exposure therapy, dark sunglasses and a strict sleep schedule can help night-shift workers create a "compromise circadian phase position," which may result in increased performance and alertness during night shifts while still allowing adequate nighttime sleep on days off. Results show that performance was better for the experimental subjects than the controls. Read more ...

Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment seems to improve cognitive functioning in patients with Alzheimer's disease who also suffer from obstructive sleep apnea, according to the results of a randomized clinical trial conducted at the University of California, San Diego. The study led by Sonia Ancoli-Israel, Ph.D. Read more ...

Japanese researchers have found that people who have hypertension and get less than the recommended amount of sleep are a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. Read more ...

Scientists from Monash University, Melbourne have shown that infants born prematurely have lower blood pressure during sleep in the first six months of life, compared to healthy, full-term infants. Scientists at the Ritchie Centre for Baby Health Research, Monash Institute of Medical Research, believe this may be one reason premature infants are at an increased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Read more ...

Reviewing the results of ten genome-wide association scans covering over 36,000 people of European descent, an international group of scientists found that a variant of a gene involved in regulating the body clock may also be linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. Read more ...