Friday, June 15, 2012
New hope for Parkinson’s patients
| THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA |
"Dyskinesia (jerky, involuntary movements) is often confused as a symptom of Parkinson's disease, when in fact it is a side-effect of the treatment."
Image: MartiSaiz/iStockphoto
The illicit drug ‘ecstasy' is strongly associated with rave culture, but can a drug that makes people want to dance be used to develop medicines that curb involuntary movements in Parkinson's disease? A team led by a medicinal chemist at The University of Western Australia thinks it may be possible.
Associate Professor Matthew Piggott said Parkinson's patients have a great deal of difficulty moving without medication. The drug levodopa restores their movement but, over time, side-effects often develop. These include a reduction in therapeutic duration (‘on-time') and jerky, involuntary movements known as dyskinesia.
"Dyskinesia is often confused as a symptom of Parkinson's disease, when in fact it is a side-effect of the treatment," Associate Professor Piggott said.
"For some time now we've known that the drug most commonly sold as ‘ecstasy', methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), ameliorates the side-effects of levodopa therapy. But MDMA has no therapeutic potential because it makes users ‘high'. Although controversial, there is also evidence that MDMA may be neurotoxic, or at least responsible for long-term, deleterious changes in brain chemistry."
The team of UWA scientists, in collaboration with Parkinson's disease experts in Toronto, has now demonstrated that it is possible to dissociate the beneficial effects of MDMA from its undesirable attributes. The feat was achieved through the creation of MDMA analogues - new compounds with a similar chemical structure to MDMA.
"The best compound, which we call UWA-101, is even more effective than MDMA at enhancing the quality of levodopa therapy. In the best animal model of Parkinson's disease, UWA-101 lengthened on-time by up to 30%. More importantly, UWA-101 increased the proportion of on-time that was of good quality (i.e. without disabling dyskinesia) by 178%. If translated to a medicine, this would mean that Parkinson's patients could take their medication less frequently and get a better quality result from it," Professor Piggott said.
UWA psychopharmacologist Professor Mathew Martin-Iverson and PhD student Zak Millar, have shown that UWA-101 is unlikely to be psychoactive, based on studies in rats. In addition, UWA-101 is not toxic to a cell line used to model MDMA-induced neurotoxicity. UWA-101 is therefore a promising lead for the development of new drugs to improve quality of life for Parkinson's sufferers.
The results were recently published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, and featured on the ABC's 7:30 program.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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Early learning about spatial relationships boosts understanding of numbers
Children who are skilled in understanding how shapes fit together to make recognizable objects also have an advantage when it comes to learning the number line and solving math problems, research at the University of Chicago shows.
The work is further evidence of the value of providing young children with early opportunities in spatial learning, which contributes to their ability to mentally manipulate objects and understand spatial relationships, which are important in a wide range of tasks, including reading maps and graphs and understanding diagrams showing how to put things together. Those skills also have been shown to be important in Science Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields.
Scholars at UChicago have shown, for instance, that working with puzzles and learning to identify shapes are connected to improved spatial understanding and better achievement, particularly in geometry. A new paper, however, is the first to connect robust spatial learning with better comprehension of other aspects of mathematics, such as arithmetic.
"We found that children's spatial skills at the beginning of first and second grades predicted improvements in linear number line knowledge over the course of the school year," said Elizabeth Gunderson, a UChicago postdoctoral scholar who is lead author of the paper, "The Relation Between Spatial Skill and Early Number Knowledge: The Role of the Linear Number Line," published in the current issue of the journal Development Psychology.
In addition to finding the importance of spatial learning to improving understanding of the number line, the team also showed that better understanding of the number line boosted mathematics performance on a calculation task.
"These results suggest that improving children's spatial thinking at a young age may not only help foster skills specific to spatial reasoning but also improve symbolic numerical representations," said co-author Susan Levine, a leading authority on spatial and mathematical learning.
"This is important since spatial learning is malleable and can be positively influenced by early spatial experiences," added Levine, the Stella M. Rowley Professor in Psychology at UChicago.
Gunderson, PhD'12, and the research team reasoned that improved understanding of spatial relationships would help students figure out the approximate location of numbers along a line and could lead to better mathematics performance. They tested their idea with two experiments.
In the first experiment, the team studied 152 first- and second-grade boys and girls from diverse backgrounds in five urban schools. It gave them tests at the beginning and end of the school year, to see how well they could locate numbers on a straight, unmarked line with zero at one end and 1,000 at the other.
At the beginning of the school year, the researchers also assessed children's spatial knowledge on a task that required them to choose the correct piece from among four alternatives, which could be added to others to complete a square shape. The students with the strongest spatial skills showed the most growth in their number line knowledge over the course of the school year.
In a second experiment, the team showed the relationship among spatial skills, number line knowledge and facility in solving mathematics problems. That study was based on information gathered from a study of 42 children, who were videotaped between the ages of five and eight while having everyday interactions with their parents and caregivers.
The children were tested for spatial knowledge when they were five-and-a-half years old, and for number line knowledge when they were a little older than six. At age eight their calculation skills were assessed on a task that required them to approximate the answer.
Consistent with the results of the first study, this study showed clearly that the children with better spatial skills performed better on number line tests. Importantly, this number line knowledge was related to their later performance on the approximate calculation tests when they were eight years old.
"Improving children's spatial skills may have positive impacts on their future success in science, technology, engineering or mathematics disciplines, not only by improving spatial thinking but also by enhancing the numerical skills that are critical for achievement in all STEM fields," Gunderson said.
Provided by University of Chicago
"Early learning about spatial relationships boosts understanding of numbers." June 13th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-early-spatial-relationships-boosts.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Underwater Photography
Over/Under, runner-up: Stuart Ganz, United States
Wide Angle - Marine Life, runner-up: Manta Madness, by Tobias Friedrich, Germany
Sharks: runner-up: Bruce, the smiling 5m male great white, by Sam Cahir, Australia
Macro, bronze medal: A Moray Family, Seychelles, by Sue Ferreira, South Africa
Freshwater, bronze medal: Great lightning in the Verzasca River in Switzerland, by Tobias Friedrich, Germany
Wide Angle - pers, gold medal: A swarm around a per, by Christian Schlamann, Germany
Freshwater, gold medal: Wraysbury Lake's London Taxi Cab and per by Nick Blake, United Kingdom
Macro - swimming, silver medal: Dirty Dancing by Marcello Di Francesco, Italy
Wide Angle - Natural Light. bronze medal: Trumpetfish (Aulostomus maculatus) by Brad Ryon, United States
Wide Angle - pers, silver medal: Freeping competition in swimming pool, Dahab, by Horen Stalbe, Egypt
Over/Under, silver medal: Swimming, by Levent Albas, Turkey
Super macro, runner-up: Kiss me, by Doris Vierkoetter, Germany
Over/Under runner-up: Boat & Mountain outside Water , by Jagwang Koo, South Korea
Wide Angle Marine Life, gold medal: A mother Humpback Whale, by Steven Anderson, United States
Wide Angle - Marine Life, silver medal: Alp Baranok, Turkey
Wide Angle - Wrecks, gold medal: The newly-sunk wreck of USS Kittiwake, by Paul Colley, United Kingdom
Macro - not swimming, silver medal: Call of the Wild, by Suzan Meldonian, United States
Conscious perception is a matter of global neural networks
Neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex represent the content of consciousness. The red trace depicts neural activity (neuronal discharges) in the lateral prefrontal cortex when a stimulus is consciously perceived for 1 second while the green trace depicts neural activity when the same stimulus is suppressed from awareness. Credit: MPI for Biological Cybernetics
(Medical Xpress) -- Consciousness is a selective process that allows only a part of the sensory input to reach awareness. But up to today it has yet to be clarified which areas of the brain are responsible for the content of conscious perception. Theofanis Panagiotaropoulos and his colleagues - researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen and University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona - have now discovered that the content of consciousness is not localized in a unique cortical area, but is most likely an emergent property of global networks of neuronal populations.
The question which parts of the brain are responsible for the things that reach our awareness is one of the main puzzles in neurobiology today. Previous research on the brains of primates has shown that neurons in primary and secondary cortices provide poor representation of visual consciousness. In contrast, the neurons in the temporal lobe seem to reliably reflect the actual conscious perception of a visual stimulus. These findings indicated that not all parts of the brain are responsible for the content of conscious awareness. Nevertheless, the question whether only one of the brain's areas is responsible for the content of perception or whether more regions are involved in the process has so far remained unanswered.
The Max Planck scientists in Tübingen led by Nikos Logothetis have now addressed this issue using electrophysiological methods to monitor the neural activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex of macaque monkeys during ambiguous visual stimulation. The visual stimuli used allow for multiple perceptual interpretations, even though the actual input remained the same. In doing so, Panagiotaropoulos and his team were able to show that the electrical activity monitored in the lateral prefrontal cortex correlates with what the macaque monkeys actually perceive.
They thus concluded that visual awareness is not only reliably reflected in the temporal lobe, but also in the lateral prefrontal cortex of primates. The results depict that the neuronal correlates of consciousness are embedded in this area, which has a direct connection to premotor and motor areas of the brain, and is therefore able to directly affect motor output. These findings support the “frontal lobe hypothesis” of conscious visual perception established in 1995 by the researchers Crick (the co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule) and Koch that awareness is related to neural activity with direct access to the planning stages of the brain.
The results support this theory in so far as they show that the lateral prefrontal cortex is involved in the process of visual awareness. However, the fact that neural activity in two different cortical areas reflects conscious perception shows that the decision which sensory input reaches our awareness is most likely not made in a unique cortical area but, rather, that a global network of neurons from different areas of the brain is responsible for it. “Our results therefore broaden the hypothesis and create new questions regarding the cortical mechanisms of visual awareness”, Panagiotaropoulos explains. In the near future the group is going to record the electrical activity in both regions simultaneously.
By this they will try to find out which of the two areas is activated first and draw conclusions on how the two areas interact with each other during conscious perception. This may lead to a better understanding of why only certain things reach our awareness and others remain suppressed.
More information: Theofanis I. Panagiotaropoulos, et al, Visual Consciousness in the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex, Neuron, Volume 74, Issue 5, 924-935, June 7th, 2012, 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.04.013
Provided by Max Planck Society
"Conscious perception is a matter of global neural networks." June 13th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-conscious-perception-global-neural-networks.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Music of kindness: Playing together strengthens empathy in children
Festival of Ideas: Musical mayhem. Credit: University of Cambridge
A year-long study on children’s music-making indicates that playing music in groups on a regular basis greatly improves a child’s ability to empathise with others.
Researchers looking at group education sessions for 8 to 11 year old children have shown that engaging in regular music-based activities with others – from ensembles to simple rhythmic exercises – can conspicuously advance empathy development, increasing a child’s capacity to recognise and consider the emotions of others.
A total of 52 children – boys and girls – were split into three groups at random. One of these groups met on a weekly basis to interact through musical games devised by the researchers, while the other two acted as control groups – one met with the same regularity but activities focused on words and drama but not music, the other received no additional activities.
Using standard and novel techniques such as answering questions designed to test compassion, and responding to emotion in facial expressions and movies, each child’s level of emotional empathy was evaluated at the start of the study and then again after a year. The researchers found that children in the music-based activity group showed a substantial increase in empathy scores and a higher average score compared to the other groups.
“These results bear out our hypothesis that certain components of musical interaction may enhance a capacity for emotional empathy, which continues outside the musical context,” says Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, from the Centre for Music and Science, who led the study.
“We feel that the program of musical activities we’ve developed could serve as a platform for a new approach to music education – one that helps advance not just musical skill but also social abilities and, in particular, the emotional understanding of others.”
The activities used in the study were developed to emphasize the components of musical interaction that the researchers believed would promote empathy – fostering greater understanding of shared mental states.
These empathy-promoting musical components include imitation, where children were asked to mimic or match other players’ movements and musical motifs – such as in the ‘Mirror Match’ game – and entrainment, where the researchers used rhythm to encourage synchronised performance – so that children learnt to align and adjust themselves through attending to others.
By engaging with these musical activities, the children were regularly experiencing states of what the researchers describe as ‘shared intentionality’ – an understanding of each other’s intentions through a common aim or object of attention – creating an emotional affinity among the children.
The team, which also included Professor Ian Cross, head of the Centre for Music and Science at the Faculty of Music, and Dr. Pamela Burnard of the Faculty of Education, came up with increasingly complex music games to explore ‘shared intentionality’ – activities included creating music that reflected the perceived emotion of others, or composing music together with a clear theme.
According to the researchers, music and rhythm allows a sense of mutual ‘honesty’ that goes beyond the more precise expression in verbal communication. In essence, everyone can feel a rhythm and respond – sharing an experience regardless of linguistic skills.
“The point about music is that it can make you feel as though you are sharing the same experience, when you don’t need to be doing the same thing or feeling the same way,” says Cross. “There is a strong sense in communal music that you simply do feel you are experiencing the same thing as everyone else.”
The researchers believe that teaching emotional intelligence should become part of school curriculums, and that music might be a very good way to do it. “Increased ability to empathise may lead to altruistic behaviour that benefits educational environments such as patience and cooperativeness,” says Rabinowitch. “Previous studies have shown that children who score higher on an empathy scale are more likely to help others being bullied for example.”
“Working with children on social and emotional communication allows them to gain confidence in experiencing another person’s emotional state – and producing a supportive emotional response. We believe music to be one of the most welcoming and enjoyable – as well as extremely effective – mediums through which ‘empathy education’ can be achieved.”
“We hope to build on the suggestive results of this study and to replicate its findings with larger groups and in different cultural settings. One of the areas I’m keen to explore is its effectiveness on populations that are seen to have less capacity for empathy – such as those on the autistic spectrum.”
Adds Cross: “Conventional primary music education is thought of as skill or craft based, but in the context of a musical interaction program such as ours it’s not just learning to do something – it’s learning to interact with others. The findings show that music as a group medium can give rise to and sustain the development of empathy – but at the same time it is still artistic education, and there’s no reason it can’t be both.”
Provided by University of Cambridge
"Music of kindness: Playing together strengthens empathy in children." June 13th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-music-kindness-empathy-children.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Role of omega-3 in preventing cognitive decline in older people questioned
Older people who take omega-3 fish oil supplements are probably not reducing their chances of losing cognitive function, according to a new Cochrane systematic review. Based on the available data from studies lasting up to 3.5 years, the researchers concluded that the supplements offered no benefits for cognitive health over placebo capsules or margarines, but that longer term effects are worth investigating.
Omega-3 fatty acids are fats responsible for many important jobs in the body. We get these fats through our daily diets and the three major omega-3 fats are: alpha linolenic acid (ALA) from sources such as nuts and seeds and eicosapentoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) from sources including oily fish such as salmon and mackerel. A number of studies have hinted that omega-3 fatty acids and DHA in particular may be involved in keeping nerve cells in the brain healthy into old age. However, there is limited evidence for the role of these fats in preventing cognitive decline and dementia.
The researchers, led by Emma Sydenham at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), London, UK, gathered together evidence from three high quality trials comparing the effects of omega-3 fatty acids taken in capsules or margarine spread to those of sunflower oil, olive oil or regular margarine. A total of 3,536 people over the age of 60 took part in the trials, which lasted between six and 40 months. None of the participants had any signs of poor cognitive health or dementia at the start of the trials.
The researchers found no benefit of taking the omega-3 capsules or spread over placebo capsules or spread. Participants given omega-3 did not score better in standard mental state examinations or in memory and verbal fluency tests than those given placebo.
"From these studies, there doesn't appear to be any benefit for cognitive health for older people of taking omega-3 supplements," said Alan Dangour, a nutritionist at LSHTM and co-author of the report. "However, these were relatively short-term studies, so we saw very little deterioration in cognitive function in either the intervention groups or the control groups. It may take much longer to see any effect of these supplements."
The researchers conclude that the longer term effects of omega-3 fatty acids on cognitive decline and dementia need to be explored in further studies, particularly in people with low intakes of omega-3 fatty acids in their diet. In the meantime, they stress other potential health benefits. "Fish is an important part of a healthy diet and we would still support the recommendation to eat two portions a week, including one portion of oily fish," said Dangour.
More information: Sydenham E, Dangour AD, Lim WS. Omega 3 fatty acid for the prevention of cognitive decline and dementia. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2012, Issue 6. Art. No.: CD005379. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD005379.pub3
Provided by Wiley
"Role of omega-3 in preventing cognitive decline in older people questioned." June 12th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-role-omega-cognitive-decline-older.html
Comment:
Peanut butter and oily Mackerel sandwiches?
Peanut butter and oily Mackerel sandwiches?
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Hormones, Elvis, and human emotion: Shedding light on what makes people feel and act the way they do
The velvety voice of Elvis Presley still makes hearts flutter—and in a new study with people who have the rare genetic disorder Williams syndrome, one of the King's classics is among a group of songs that helped to cast light on part of the essence of being human: the mystery of emotion and human interaction.
In a study led by Julie R. Korenberg, Ph.D., M.D., University of Utah/USTAR professor, Circuits of the Brain and pediatrics, people with and without Williams syndrome (WS) listened to music in a trial to gauge emotional response through the release of oxytocin and arginine vasopressin (AVP), two hormones associated with emotion. The study, published June 12, 2012, in PLoS ONE, signals a paradigm shift both for understanding human emotional and behavioral systems and expediting the treatments of devastating illnesses such as WS, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and possibly even autism, according to Korenberg, senior author on the study and one of the world's leading experts in genetics, brain, and behavior of WS.
"Our results could be very important for guiding the treatment of these disorders," Korenberg says. "It could have enormous implications for personal the use of drugs to help people."
The study also is the first to reveal new genes that control emotional responses and to show that AVP is involved in the response to music.
Williams syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by the deletion of 25 to 28 genes on one copy of chromosome 7. Those with the disorder look at the world through a unique lens. They may view everyone as their friend, to the point of running up to total strangers and striking up conversations as though they are old acquaintances. They have an affinity for music. But they also experience heightened anxiety, have an average IQ of 60, experience severe spatial-visual problems, and suffer from cardiovascular and other health issues. Despite their desire to befriend people, they have difficulty creating and maintaining social relationships, something that is not at all understood but can afflict many people without WS.
Korenberg and colleagues from the U of U, University of Illinois, Chicago, and the Salk Institute, La Jolla, Calif., conducted a trial with 21 participants, 13 who have WS and a control group of eight people without the disorder. The participants were evaluated at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Because music is a known strong emotional stimulus, the researchers asked participants to listen to music.
Before the music was played, the participants' blood was drawn to determine a baseline level for oxytocin, and those with WS had three times as much of the hormone as those without the syndrome. Blood also was drawn at regular intervals while the music played and was analyzed afterward to check for real-time, rapid changes in the levels of oxytocin and AVP. Other studies have examined how oxytocin affects emotion when artificially introduced into people, such as through nasal sprays, but this is the one of the first significant studies to measure naturally occurring changes in oxytocin levels in rapid, real time as people undergo an emotional response.
Researchers asked the first participant to listen to the 1950s Elvis classic, "Love Me Tender." The woman showed no outward response to the song, which can be typical not only of people with WS but particularly of people without the disorder whose faces may be impassive but jump up at the end of an exciting piece, Korenberg points out. But, to elicit a greater response from the remaining test participants, the researchers invited them to bring their favorite music to listen to—and many of them chose heavy metal. Again, there was little outward response to the music.
But when the blood samples were analyzed, the researchers were happily surprised. The analyses showed that the oxytocin levels, and to a lesser degree AVP, had not only increased but begun to bounce among WS participants while among those without WS, both the oxytocin and AVP levels remained largely unchanged as they listened to music. Interestingly, the oxytocin level in the woman who'd listened to "Love Me Tender" skyrocketed compared to the levels of participants who listened to different music.
Korenberg believes the blood analyses strongly indicate that oxytocin and AVP are not regulated correctly in people with WS, and that the behavioral characteristics unique to people with WS are related to this problem.
"This shows that oxytocin quite likely is very involved in emotional response," Korenberg says.
To ensure accuracy of results, those taking the test also were asked to place their hands in 60-degree Fahrenheit water to test for negative stress, and the same results were produced as when they listened to music. Those with WS experienced an increase in oxytocin and AVP, while those without the syndrome did not.
Listening to Elvis was part of a larger study, published in the June 12, 2012 issue of PLoS One, that shows for the first time that oxytocin and another hormone associated with emotion, arginine vasopressin (AVP), are poorly regulated in people with WS and that atypical levels of oxytocin are linked to both the desire to seek social interaction and decreased ability to process social clues.
WS is ideal for studying how genes influence social behavior and emotion, according to Korenberg. Unlike other social disorders, the cause of Williams syndrome is known, which is critical for pinpointing areas of the brain and genes related to the disorder. It also could be extremely important in finding drug targets for WS.
In addition to listening to music, study participants already had taken three standard social behavior tests that evaluate willingness to approach and speak to strangers, emotional states, and various areas of adaptive and problem behavior. Those test results suggest that increased levels of oxytocin are linked to both increased desire to seek social interaction and decreased ability to process social cues, a double-edged message that may be very useful at times, for example, during courtship, but damaging at others, as in Williams syndrome.
"The association between abnormal levels of oxytocin and AVP and altered social behaviors found in people with Williams Syndrome points to surprising, entirely unsuspected deleted genes involved in regulation of these hormones and human sociability," Korenberg said. "It also suggests that the simple characterization of oxytocin as 'the love hormone' may be an overreach. The data paint a far more complicated picture."
However, the picture is very hopeful, and the study provides a key breakthrough that lights the way to making rapid progress in treating WS, and perhaps Autism and anxiety through regulation of these key players in human brain and emotion, oxytocin and vasopressin. It is important that work in the very near future may allow us to know how to adjust the dial on the OT and AVP system and its effects in different brain regions in ways that relieve suffering and improve the lives of those with the disorder, according to Korenberg.
In particular, the study results indicate that the missing genes affect the release of oxytocin and AVP through the hypothalmus and the pituitary gland. About the size of a pearl, the hypothalamus is located just above the brain stem and produces hormones that control body temperature, hunger, mood, sex drive, sleep, hunger and thirst, and the release of hormones from many glands, including the pituitary. The pituitary gland, about the size of a pea, controls many other glands responsible for hormone secretion. The results of this study points to new clues as to what makes us and may prevent us from being just a bit more human.
Provided by University of Utah Health Sciences
"Hormones, Elvis, and human emotion: Shedding light on what makes people feel and act the way they do." June 13th, 2012.http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-hormones-elvis-human-emotion-people.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Obesity, depression found to be root causes of daytime sleepiness
Wake up, America, and lose some weight – it's keeping you tired and prone to accidents. Three studies being presented today at sleep 2012 conclude that obesity and depression are the two main culprits making us excessively sleepy while awake.
Researchers at Penn State examined a random population sample of 1,741 adults and determined that obesity and emotional stress are the main causes of the current "epidemic" of sleepiness and fatigue plaguing the country. Insufficient sleep and obstructive sleep apnea also play a role; both have been linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, depression, diabetes, obesity and accidents.
"The 'epidemic' of sleepiness parallels an 'epidemic' of obesity and psychosocial stress," said Alexandros Vgontzas, MD, the principal investigator for the three studies. "Weight loss, depression and sleep disorders should be our priorities in terms of preventing the medical complications and public safety hazards associated with this excessive sleepiness."
In the Penn State cohort study, 222 adults reporting excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) were followed up 7½ years later. For those whose EDS persisted, weight gain was the strongest predicting factor. "In fact, our results showed that in individuals who lost weight, excessive sleepiness improved," Vgontzas said.
Adults from that same cohort who developed EDS within the 7½-year span also were studied. The results show for the first time that depression and obesity are the strongest risk factors for new-onset excessive sleepiness. The third study, of a group of 103 research volunteers, determined once again that depression and obesity were the best predictors for EDS.
"The primary finding connecting our three studies are that depression and obesity are the main risk factors for both new-onset and persistent excessive sleepiness," Vgontzas said.
In the Penn State cohort study, the rate of new-onset excessive sleepiness was 8 percent, and the rate of persistent daytime sleepiness was 38 percent. Like insufficient sleep and obstructive sleep apnea, EDS also is associated with significant health risks and on-the-job accidents.
More information: The three abstracts are being presented today at SLEEP 2012, the 26th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) in Boston.
Provided by American Academy of Sleep Medicine
"Obesity, depression found to be root causes of daytime sleepiness." June 13th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-obesity-depression-root-daytime-sleepiness.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
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