News by Subject Medicine & Health

Gautam Das, a professor in UTA's Computer Science and Engineering Department, worked with University of Maryland School of Medicine physicians to understand whether sleep studies predicted the improved outcomes following surgery for sleep apnea in children. For their analysis, they re-analyzed the data collected during the Childhood Adenotonsillectomy Trial (CHAT), a randomized trial published in 2013 that compared adenotonsillectomy with watchful waiting for seven months to treat sleep apnea in children.

In a study of mice, a team of Japanese and US researchers show that REM sleep may be a time when the brain actively forgets. Their results suggest that forgetting during sleep may be controlled by neurons found deep inside the brain that were previously known for making an appetite stimulating hormone.

The intensity of brain activity during the day, notwithstanding how long we've been awake, appears to increase our need for sleep, according to a new UCL study in zebrafish, published in Neuron.

For adolescent girls but not boys, bigger waistlines and greater fat mass were associated with being an evening chronotype who prefers going to bed and waking up later and greater social jet lag because of later sleep timing on weekends versus weekdays, independent of sleep duration and other lifestyle factors.

In patients with high blood pressure resistant to treatment who also have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the more severe their OSA, the higher their blood pressure, according to new research published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

The most current research on head and neck cancer, cochlear implants, techniques in tonsillectomies, opioid prescribing patterns, residency matching, and other topics related to otolaryngology-head and neck surgery will be presented in New Orleans, LA, September 15-18, 2019, during the 2019 Annual Meeting & OTO Experience of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation.

Use of traditional cigarettes or e-cigarettes was linked with more sleep difficulties in a recent Journal of Sleep Research study.

Could a chemical produced by the brain that regulates mood, sleep and breathing also be protective in people with epilepsy? New research has found that higher levels of serotonin in the blood after a seizure are linked to a lower incidence of seizure-related breathing problems called apneas, when a person temporarily stops breathing. The study is published in the Sept. 4, 2019, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The August 2019 issue of the journal also features research about housing loss and cognitive decline, napping as an early marker of cognitive impairment and a special article on 'super-agers'.

After a decade of searching, the UC San Francisco scientists who identified the only human gene known to promote 'natural short sleep' -- lifelong, nightly sleep that lasts just four to six hours yet leaves individuals feeling fully rested -- have discovered a second.