Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is involved in memory consolidation, which implies synaptic plasticity. This process requires protein synthesis and the reorganization of the neural cytoskeleton. REM sleep deprivation (REMSD) has an impact on some neuronal proteins involved in synaptic plasticity, such as glutamate receptors and postsynaptic density protein 95, ...

The SIX family of homeodomain-containing DNA-binding proteins play crucial roles in both Drosophila and vertebrate retinal specification. In flies, three such family members exist, but only two, Sine oculis (So) and Optix, are expressed and function within the eye. In vertebrates, the homologs of Optix (Six3 and Six6) and probably ...

Co-option of the eye developmental gene regulatory network may have led to the appearance of novel functional traits on the wings of flies and butterflies. The first trait is a recently described wing organ in a species of extinct midge resembling the outer layers of the midge's own compound eye. ...

Narcolepsy is characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness, with or without cataplexy. Associated features include sleep paralysis, hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations, and disturbed nocturnal sleep. Narcolepsy is strongly associated with the HLA DQB1*0602 allele, and its symptoms stem from destruction of hypocretin-secreting neurons in the hypothalamus. Recently identified autoantibodies to Tribbles ...

OBJECTIVE:Examine the prevalence, patterns, and persistence of parent-reported sleep problems during the first 3 years of life.METHODS:Three hundred fifty-nine mother/child pairs participated in a prospective birth cohort study. Sleep questionnaires were administered to mothers when children were 6, 12, 24, and 36 months old. Sleep variables included parent response to ...

Planarians represent an excellent model to study the processes of body axis and organ re-specification during regeneration. Previous studies have revealed a conserved role for the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) pathway and its intracellular mediators Smad1/5/8 and Smad4 in planarian dorsoventral (DV) axis re-establishment. In an attempt to gain further ...

Purpose:A non-sense mutation at codon 95 in the gene encoding complement factor C9 (C9-R95X) is found frequently among Japanese. We investigated the association between C9-R95X and Japanese patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV).Methods:The presence of C9-R95X polymorphism was assessed in Japanese patients with either ...

The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster is an established model used for aging and longevity studies and more recently for sleep studies. Mammals and Drosophila share various physiological, pathological, pharmacological and genetic similarities in these processes. In particular, sleep is essential for survival in both species and both have age-associated sleep ...

Aging is associated with marked changes in the timing, consolidation and structure of sleep. Older people wake up frequently, get up earlier and have less slow wave sleep than young people, although the extent of these age-related changes differs considerably between individuals. Interindividual differences in homeostatic sleep regulation in young ...

PURPOSE: In patients on dialysis, the results of studies examining the association between sleep disorders and inflammation are controversial. We assessed the association between inflammatory markers and different sleep disorders in a large sample of kidney transplant recipients. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of 100 randomly selected kidney transplant patients who underwent ...

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown an inconsistent association between sleep duration and hypercholesterolaemia. This study examined the association between sleep duration and hypercholesterolaemia in a nationally representative sample of US adults. METHODS: A cross-sectional study of 16,652 participants in the 2008 National Health Interview Survey (aged ⩾18years, 52.5% women) was ...

PURPOSE.: The purpose of this study was to determine how optometric practitioners modify the subjective refractive result when prescribing spectacles. METHODS.: Refractive data were gathered for patient visits at the School of Optometry, University of Waterloo, between January 2007 and January 2008. The entering prescription, subjective refraction, and exiting prescription ...

Humans sleep approximately a third of their lifetime. The observation that individuals with either long or short sleep duration show associations with metabolic syndrome and psychiatric disorders suggests that the length of sleep is adaptive. Although sleep duration can be influenced by photoperiod (season) and phase of entrainment (chronotype), human ...

Aims:  To characterize sleep patterns and sleep problems in a large sample of young children (birth to 36 months) in Australia (AU) and New Zealand (NZ). Methods:  Parents and caregivers of 2154 infants and toddlers in AU and NZ completed an expanded version of the Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire. Results:  Overall, ...

PURPOSE: To compare the spectral transmission characteristics of currently available, foldable, clear and yellow-tinted intraocular lenses (IOLs), and evaluate the protective effects they provide against retinal damage by sunlight. METHODS: We measured the spectral transmittance in the wavelength range of 300-800 nm using a spectrophotometer for 63 IOLs including three clear ...

Women report increasing sleep difficulties during menopause, but polysomnographic measures do not detect sleep disturbances. We examined whether two spectral analysis sleep measures, delta and beta power, were related to menopausal status. The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Sleep Study compared cross-sectionally spectral sleep measures in women ...

Leptin, involved in energy regulation and contributor to cardiovascular disease, has been implicated to play a role in depression and sleep disturbances, two closely intertwined conditions. Previous results investigating leptin level alterations either in sleep disorders or in depression have been inconsistent. We investigate the association between leptin levels and ...

Electroencephalographic (EEG) δ waves during non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREMS) after sleep deprivation are enhanced. That observation eventually led to the use of EEG δ power as a parameter to model process S in the two-process model of sleep. It works remarkably well as a model parameter because it often ...

There is emerging evidence suggesting that disturbances in sleep and sleep disorders play a role in the morbidity of chronic conditions including obesity and hypertension as well as in the development of type-2 diabetes. This brief review examines the role of inflammation in the development of atherosclerosis. Furthermore, it outlines ...

Background: The association between specific sleeping disorders and risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is unclear. We assessed the association between sleep loss due to worry and future risk of CVD and death in a representative sample of community dwelling adults. Methods: A cohort of 11,905 adults (aged 53.4 ± 12.2 ...

Background and purpose:  Prolonged wakefulness impairs sustained vigilant attention as measured with the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) and induces a compensatory increase in sleep intensity in recovery sleep as quantified by slow-wave activity (SWA) in the sleep electroencephalogram (EEG). These effects of sleep deprivation are counteracted by the adenosine receptor ...

We investigated differentiation processes in the Neotropical fish Astyanax that represents a model system for examining adaptation to caves, including regressive evolution. In particular, we analyzed microsatellite and mitochondrial data of seven cave and seven surface populations from Mexico to test whether the evolution of the cave fish represents a ...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between sleep duration and insulin resistance in rural Chinese adults and examine whether any such associations are independent of adiposity. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional analysis of 854 men and 640 women aged 20 to 70years from the Anqing Twin Cohort. The following measures were ...

BACKGROUND: The gene encoding the regulator of G-protein signaling subtype 4 (RGS4), located on chromosome 1q23-3, has been proposed as a possible susceptibility gene for schizophrenia and has been specifically linked to prefrontal cortical structural and functional integrity.MethodThe effects of four core single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the RGS4 gene ...

Purpose/Objectives: To explore an association between sleep quality in children and adolescents undergoing therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and polymorphisms in two proinflammatory cytokines, interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF).Design: Retrospective exploratory analysis using data from a multi-institutional prospective study comparing objective sleep measures by actigraphy over 10 ...

Dry eye is the most prevalent condition seen by the ophthalmologist, in particular in elderly. The identification of new common risk factors (computer use and contact lens wear) extends the disease among the young people. The early diagnosis of dry eye is essential, but difficult, because the biochemical changes in ...

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of polymorphism on sleep parameters of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS) patients. METHODS: Patients were genotyped after a full-night polysomnography using the large Epidemiologic Sleep Study of São Paulo population-based sample. RESULTS: Individuals who carry the APOE ε2 allele ...

The number reduction task (NRT) allows studying the transition from implicit knowledge of hidden task regularities to explicit insight into these regularities. To identify sleep-associated neurophysiological indicators of this restructuring of knowledge representations, we measured frequency-specific power of EEG while participants slept during the night between two sessions of the ...

To describe the refractive outcome of toric intraocular lens (IOL) implantation by taking into account the effect on astigmatic outcome of the anterior chamber depth and the sphere power of the IOL, and to examine whether the predictability of the toric effect can be improved. In a university department in ...

INTRODUCTION: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been hypothesized to cause a hypersympathetic state, which may be the mechanism for the increased incidence of cardiovascular disease in OSA. However, there is a high prevalence of hyperglycemia in OSA patients, which may also contribute to autonomic dysfunction. METHODS: Thirty-five patients with OSA ...

PURPOSE:: To report a case series of eyes with posterior polymorphous corneal dystrophy and steep nonkeratoconic corneas. METHODS:: Retrospective, descriptive, nonrandomized case series. RESULTS:: Thirty-five eyes of 18 patients (14 cases from 6 families and 4 isolated cases) with diffuse posterior polymorphous corneal dystrophy had mean topographic simulated keratometry readings ...

OBJECTIVES:: One of the hypothesized causes of the breakdown in sleep-wake consolidation often occurring in individuals with Alzheimer disease (AD) is the dysfunction of the circadian clock. The goal of this study is to report indices of sleep-wake function collected from individuals with AD in relation to relevant polymorphisms in ...

To investigate differences and a possible effect modification by geographical region in the association between sleep duration and overweight. Cross-sectional. Primary schools and preschools in 8 European countries. 7867 children aged 2 to 9 years. Not applicable. Nocturnal sleep duration was assessed as part of a parental 24-h recall. Height ...

Data from human genetics, histopathology, and animal models reveal a major role for the complement system in the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Genetic variations in the complement factor H (CFH) gene are associated with an elevated risk of AMD. In this study we sought to determine whether eyes ...

The sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) changes across adolescence; however, there are conflicting data as to whether EEG changes are regionally specific, are evident in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and whether there are sex differences. The present study seeks to resolve some of these issues in ...

Behavioural sleep treatments teach children to self soothe and sleep alone but often require a parent to ignore their child's cries for extended periods, a technique parents may find difficult. This paper presents a modified version of sleep training which aims to improve sleep but reduce crying in children and ...

To propose a method of calculating the power of the 1-sided posterior chamber toric bag-in-the-lens (BIL) intraocular lens (IOL) and propose a misalignment nomogram to calculate the postoperative rotational misalignment or predict the effect of preoperative existing irregular corneal astigmatism. Antwerp University Hospital, Department of Ophthalmology, Antwerp, Belgium. Cohort study. ...

Recent epidemiologic studies have found that self-reported sleep duration is associated with components of metabolic syndrome (MS) such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension. This relation may be under influence of regional factors in different regions of the world. The association of sleep duration and MS in a sample of Iranian ...

Citation information: Debert I, de Alencar LM, Polati M, Souza MB & Alves MR. Oculometric parameters of hyperopia in children with esotropic amblyopia. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt 2011. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-1313.2011.00850.x ABSTRACT: Purpose:  To study the oculometric parameters of hyperopia in children with esotropic amblyopia, comparing amblyopic eyes with fellow eyes. Methods:  ...

PURPOSE: To determine whether retinal arteriolar wall signs are associated with early age-related macular degeneration (AMD). DESIGN: Population-based cross-sectional study. METHODS: The Singapore Malay Eye Study (SiMES) is a population-based eye survey including 3280 (78.7% response) persons aged 40 to 80 years. Retinal arteriolar wall signs and AMD were assessed ...

Early high school start times may contribute to insufficient sleep leading to increased teen crash rate. Virginia Beach (VB) and Chesapeake are adjacent, demographically similar cities. VB high schools start 75-80 minutes earlier than Chesapeake's. We hypothesized that VB teens would manifest a higher crash rate than Chesapeake teens. The ...

Family systems are dynamic, with reciprocal interactions among family members. When children have sleep problems, they often awaken a parent, affecting parent sleep and subsequent parent daytime functioning. Child sleep patterns can also be disrupted by parent cognitions related to the child's sleep, as well as when parents are experiencing ...

To determine the proportion of adolescents whose bedtime is set by their parents and to evaluate whether parent-set bedtimes are associated with earlier bedtimes, more sleep, and better daytime functioning. 385 adolescents aged 13-18 years (mean = 15.6, SD = 0.95; 60% male) from 8 socioeconomically diverse schools in South ...

Sleep pattern and circadian rhythms are regulated via the retinohypothalamic tract in response to stimulation of a subset of retinal ganglion cells, predominantly by blue light (450-490 nm). With age, the transmission of blue light to the retina is reduced because of the aging process of the human lens, and ...

Fibroblast growth factor (Fgf) signalling plays a crucial role in many developmental processes. Among the Fgf pathway ligands, Fgf9 (UniProt: P54130) has been demonstrated to participate in maturation of various organs and tissues including skeleton, testes, lung, heart, and eye. Here we establish a novel Fgf9 allele, discovered in a ...

Korean adolescents have severe nighttime sleep deprivation and daytime sleepiness because of their competitive educational environment. However, daytime sleep patterns and sleepiness have never been studied using age-specific methods, such as the pediatric daytime sleepiness scale (PDSS). We surveyed the daytime sleepiness of Korean adolescents using a Korean translation of ...

Within a mutagenesis screen, we identified the new mouse mutant Aca47 with small lenses and reduced axial eye lengths. The aim of the actual study was the molecular and morphological characterization of the mouse mutant Aca47. We analyzed the offspring of paternally N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) treated C57BL/6J mice for eye-size parameters ...

To investigate the association of glutathione S-transferase (GST) GSTM1, GSTT1, and GSTP1 genes with the risk of primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) and clinical features of the disease. We conducted a case-control study that included 87 Brazilian patients with POAG and 85 healthy controls matched for age, ethnicity, and sex, ...

Background. We examined the association between insufficient rest/sleep and cardiovascular disease or diabetes mellitus separately among non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanic Americans, and other races in a contemporary sample of US adults. Methods. Multiethnic, nationally representative, cross-sectional survey (2008 BRFSS) participants who were >20 years of age (n = 369, ...

Telomere length has been proposed as a marker of aging. However, our knowledge of lifestyle risk factors determining telomere length is limited. We evaluated the associations between years of rotating night shifts, self-reported sleep duration, and telomere length in 4,117 female participants from the Nurses' Health Study. Telomere length in ...