News by Subject Medicine & Health

Long-term use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment for obstructive sleep apnea was associated an improvement in sexual quality of life for women, but not men.

A new Physiological Reports study reveals that evening use of light-emitting tablets can induce delays in desired bedtimes, suppress secretion of melatonin (the hormone that regulates sleep and wakefulness), and impair next-morning alertness.

In a recent Journal of Sleep Research study, short, but not long, weekend sleep was associated with an increased risk of early death in individuals under 65 years of age.

The first human study to look at how blood proteins vary over a 24-hour-period identified 30 with distinct time-of-day patterns and more than 100 that are disrupted by simulated night shift work

A team of researchers from BWH have isolated the impacts of short sleep and extended wakefulness on vigilant performance decline and their results are published in PNAS.

Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine have discovered how melatonin suppresses neurons in the brain that keeps you awake and alert. These findings could lead to new therapies for those who suffer from insomnia.

Disruption to normal daily circadian rhythms is associated with a greater susceptibility to mood disorders such as severe depression and bipolar disorder over the life course, according to the largest observational study of its kind involving over 91,000 people, published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

Sleep is known to be important for creative thinking, but exactly how it helps and what role each sleep stage -- REM and non-REM -- plays remains unclear. A team of researchers have now developed a hypothesis, outlined in an Opinion published May 15 in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, to explain how the interleaving of REM and non-REM sleep might facilitate creative problem solving in different but complementary ways.

In a study of community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and older who were asked about sleep disturbances, 56 percent were estimated to be at high risk of obstructive sleep apnea, but only 8 percent of the high-risk individuals had been tested for it.