Quantitative validation of the suprasternal pressure signal to assess respiratory effort during sleep.

Objective Intra-esophageal pressure (Pes) measurement is the recommended gold standard to quantify respiratory effort during sleep, but used to limited extent in clinical practice due to multiple practical drawbacks. Respiratory inductance plethysmography belts (RIP) in conjunction with oronasal airflow are the accepted substitute in polysomnographic systems (PSG) thanks to a better usability, although they are partial views on tidal volume and flow rather than true respiratory effort and are often used without calibration. In their place, the pressure variations measured non-invasively at the suprasternal notch (SSP) may provide a better measure of effort. However, this type of sensor has been validated only for respiratory events in the context of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA). We aim to provide an extensive verification of the suprasternal pressure signal against RIP belts and Pes, covering both normal breathing and respiratory events. Approach We simultaneously acquired suprasternal (207) and esophageal pressure (20) signals along with RIP belts during a clinical PSG of 207 participants. In each signal, we detected breaths with a custom algorithm, and evaluated the SSP in terms of detection quality, breathing rate estimation, and similarity of breathing patterns against RIP and Pes. Additionally, we examined how the SSP signal may diverge from RIP and Pes in presence of respiratory events scored by a sleep technician. Main results The SSP signal proved to be a reliable substitute for both esophageal pressure (Pes) and respiratory inductance plethysmography (RIP) in terms of breath detection, with sensitivity and positive predictive value exceeding 75 %, and low error in breathing rate estimation. The SSP was also consistent with Pes (correlation of 0.72, similarity 80.8 %) in patterns of increasing pressure amplitude that are common in OSA. Significance This work provides a quantitative analysis of suprasternal pressure sensors for respiratory effort measurements.

A multi-task learning model using RR intervals and respiratory effort to assess sleep disordered breathing.

BACKGROUND: Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) affects a significant portion of the population. As such, there is a need for accessible and affordable assessment methods for diagnosis but also case-finding and long-term follow-up. Research has focused on exploiting cardiac and respiratory signals to extract proxy measures for sleep combined with SDB event detection. We introduce a novel multi-task model combining cardiac activity and respiratory effort to perform sleep-wake classification and SDB event detection in order to automatically estimate the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) as severity indicator. METHODS: The proposed multi-task model utilized both convolutional and recurrent neural networks and was formed by a shared part for common feature extraction, a task-specific part for sleep-wake classification, and a task-specific part for SDB event detection. The model was trained with RR intervals derived from electrocardiogram and respiratory effort signals. To assess performance, overnight polysomnography (PSG) recordings from 198 patients with varying degree of SDB were included, with manually annotated sleep stages and SDB events. RESULTS: We achieved a Cohen's kappa of 0.70 in the sleep-wake classification task, corresponding to a Spearman's correlation coefficient (R) of 0.830 between the estimated total sleep time (TST) and the TST obtained from PSG-based sleep scoring. Combining the sleep-wake classification and SDB detection results of the multi-task model, we obtained an R of 0.891 between the estimated and the reference AHI. For severity classification of SBD groups based on AHI, a Cohen's kappa of 0.58 was achieved. The multi-task model performed better than a single-task model proposed in a previous study for AHI estimation, in particular for patients with a lower sleep efficiency (R of 0.861 with the multi-task model and R of 0.746 with single-task model with subjects having sleep efficiency < 60%). CONCLUSION: Assisted with automatic sleep-wake classification, our multi-task model demonstrated proficiency in estimating AHI and assessing SDB severity based on AHI in a fully automatic manner using RR intervals and respiratory effort. This shows the potential for improving SDB screening with unobtrusive sensors also for subjects with low sleep efficiency without adding additional sensors for sleep-wake detection.

Single-channel EOG sleep staging on a heterogeneous cohort of subjects with sleep disorders.

Objective.Sleep staging based on full polysomnography is the gold standard in the diagnosis of many sleep disorders. It is however costly, complex, and obtrusive due to the use of multiple electrodes. Automatic sleep staging based on single-channel electro-oculography (EOG) is a promising alternative, requiring fewer electrodes which could be self-applied below the hairline. EOG sleep staging algorithms are however yet to be validated in clinical populations with sleep disorders.Approach.We utilized the SOMNIA dataset, comprising 774 recordings from subjects with various sleep disorders, including insomnia, sleep-disordered breathing, hypersomnolence, circadian rhythm disorders, parasomnias, and movement disorders. The recordings were divided into train (574), validation (100), and test (100) groups. We trained a neural network that integrated transformers within a U-Net backbone. This design facilitated learning of arbitrary-distance temporal relationships within and between the EOG and hypnogram.Main results.For 5-class sleep staging, we achieved median accuracies of 85.0% and 85.2% and Cohen's kappas of 0.781 and 0.796 for left and right EOG, respectively. The performance using the right EOG was significantly better than using the left EOG, possibly because in the recommended AASM setup, this electrode is located closer to the scalp. The proposed model is robust to the presence of a variety of sleep disorders, displaying no significant difference in performance for subjects with a certain sleep disorder compared to those without.Significance.The results show that accurate sleep staging using single-channel EOG can be done reliably for subjects with a variety of sleep disorders.

A phenotypic screening approach to target p60AmotL2-expressing invasive cancer cells.

BACKGROUND: Tumor cells have the ability to invade and form small clusters that protrude into adjacent tissues, a phenomenon that is frequently observed at the periphery of a tumor as it expands into healthy tissues. The presence of these clusters is linked to poor prognosis and has proven challenging to treat using conventional therapies. We previously reported that p60AmotL2 expression is localized to invasive colon and breast cancer cells. In vitro, p60AmotL2 promotes epithelial cell invasion by negatively impacting E-cadherin/AmotL2-related mechanotransduction. METHODS: Using epithelial cells transfected with inducible p60AmotL2, we employed a phenotypic drug screening approach to find compounds that specifically target invasive cells. The phenotypic screen was performed by treating cells for 72 h with a library of compounds with known antitumor activities in a dose-dependent manner. After assessing cell viability using CellTiter-Glo, drug sensitivity scores for each compound were calculated. Candidate hit compounds with a higher drug sensitivity score for p60AmotL2-expressing cells were then validated on lung and colon cell models, both in 2D and in 3D, and on colon cancer patient-derived organoids. Nascent RNA sequencing was performed after BET inhibition to analyse BET-dependent pathways in p60AmotL2-expressing cells. RESULTS: We identified 60 compounds that selectively targeted p60AmotL2-expressing cells. Intriguingly, these compounds were classified into two major categories: Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) inhibitors and Bromodomain and Extra-Terminal motif (BET) inhibitors. The latter consistently demonstrated antitumor activity in human cancer cell models, as well as in organoids derived from colon cancer patients. BET inhibition led to a shift towards the upregulation of pro-apoptotic pathways specifically in p60AmotL2-expressing cells. CONCLUSIONS: BET inhibitors specifically target p60AmotL2-expressing invasive cancer cells, likely by exploiting differences in chromatin accessibility, leading to cell death. Additionally, our findings support the use of this phenotypic strategy to discover novel compounds that can exploit vulnerabilities and specifically target invasive cancer cells.

Estimating the severity of obstructive sleep apnea using ECG, respiratory effort and neural networks.

OBJECTIVE: wearable sensor technology has progressed significantly in the last decade, but its clinical usability for the assessment of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is limited by the lack of large and representative datasets simultaneously acquired with polysomnography (PSG). The objective of this study was to explore the use of cardiorespiratory signals commonly available in standard PSGs which can be easily measured with wearable sensors, to estimate the severity of OSA. METHODS: an artificial neural network was developed for detecting sleep disordered breathing events using electrocardiogram (ECG) and respiratory effort. The network was combined with a previously developed cardiorespiratory sleep staging algorithm and evaluated in terms of sleep staging classification performance, apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) estimation, and OSA severity estimation against PSG on a large cohort of 653 participants with a wide range of OSA severity. RESULTS: four-class sleep staging achieved a κ of 0.69 with PSG, distinguishing wake, combined N1-N2, N3 and REM. AHI estimation achieved an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.91, and high diagnostic performance for different OSA severity thresholds. CONCLUSIONS: this study highlights the potential of using cardiorespiratory signals to estimate OSA severity, even without the need for airflow or oxygen saturation (SpO2), traditionally used for assessing OSA. SIGNIFICANCE: while further research is required to translate these findings to practical and unobtrusive sensors, this study demonstrates how existing, large datasets can serve as a foundation for wearable systems for OSA monitoring. Ultimately, this approach could enable long-term assessment of sleep disordered breathing, facilitating new avenues for clinical research in this field.

Maximum a posteriori detection of heartbeats from a chest-worn accelerometer.

Objective. Unobtrusive long-term monitoring of cardiac parameters is important in a wide variety of clinical applications, such as the assesment of acute illness severity and unobtrusive sleep monitoring. Here we determined the accuracy and robustness of heartbeat detection by an accelerometer worn on the chest.Approach. We performed overnight recordings in 147 individuals (69 female, 78 male) referred to two sleep centers. Two methods for heartbeat detection in the acceleration signal were compared: one previously described approach, based on local periodicity, and a novel extended method incorporating maximumaposterioriestimation and a Markov decision process to approach an optimal solution.Main results. The maximumaposterioriestimation significantly improved performance, with a mean absolute error for the estimation of inter-beat intervals of only 3.5 ms, and 95% limits of agreement of -1.7 to +1.0 beats per minute for heartrate measurement. Performance held during posture changes and was only weakly affected by the presence of sleep disorders and demographic factors.Significance. The new method may enable the use of a chest-worn accelerometer in a variety of applications such as ambulatory sleep staging and in-patient monitoring.

Multi-night home assessment of sleep structure in OSA with and without insomnia.

OBJECTIVE: To explore sleep structure in participants with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and comorbid insomnia (COMISA) and participants with OSA without insomnia (OSA-only) using both single-night polysomnography and multi-night wrist-worn photoplethysmography/accelerometry. METHODS: Multi-night 4-class sleep-staging was performed with a validated algorithm based on actigraphy and heart rate variability, in 67 COMISA (23 women, median age: 51 years) and 50 OSA-only (15 women, median age: 51) participants. Sleep statistics were compared using linear regression models and mixed-effects models. Multi-night variability was explored using a clustering approach and between- and within-participant analysis. RESULTS: Polysomnographic parameters showed no significant group differences. Multi-night measurements, during 13.4 ± 5.2 nights per subject, demonstrated a longer sleep onset latency and lower sleep efficiency for the COMISA group. Detailed analysis of wake parameters revealed longer mean durations of awakenings in COMISA, as well as higher numbers of awakenings lasting 5 min and longer (WKN≥5min) and longer wake after sleep onset containing only awakenings of 5 min or longer. Within-participant variance was significantly larger in COMISA for sleep onset latency, sleep efficiency, mean duration of awakenings and WKN≥5min. Unsupervised clustering uncovered three clusters; participants with consistently high values for at least one of the wake parameters, participants with consistently low values, and participants displaying higher variability. CONCLUSION: Patients with COMISA more often showed extended, and more variable periods of wakefulness. These observations were not discernible using single night polysomnography, highlighting the relevance of multi-night measurements to assess characteristics indicative for insomnia.

Increased body movement equals better performance? Not always! Musical style determines motion degree perceived as optimal in music performance.

Musicians' body behaviour has a preponderant role in audience perception. We investigated how performers' motion is perceived depending on the musical style and musical expertise. To further explore the effect of visual input, stimuli were presented in audio-only, audio-visual and visual-only conditions. We used motion and audio recordings of expert saxophone players playing two contrasting excerpts (positively and negatively valenced). For each excerpt, stimuli represented five motion degrees with increasing quantity of motion (QoM) and distinct predominant gestures. In the experiment (online and in-person), 384 participants rated performance recordings for expressiveness, professionalism and overall quality. Results revealed that, for the positively valenced excerpt, ratings increased as a function of QoM, whilst for the negatively valenced, the recording with predominant flap motion was favoured. Musicianship did not have a significant effect in motion perception. Concerning multisensory integration, both musicians and non-musicians presented visual dominance in the positively valenced excerpt, whereas in the negatively valenced, musicians shifted to auditory dominance. Our findings demonstrate that musical style not only determines the way observers perceive musicians' movement as adequate, but also that it can promote changes in multisensory integration.

Weighing in on miniaturization: New body mass estimates for Triassic eucynodonts and analyses of body size evolution during the cynodont-mammal transition.

Body size influences most aspects of an animal's biology, consequently, evolutionary diversification is often accompanied by differentiation of body sizes within a lineage. It is accepted that miniaturization, or the evolution of extremely small body sizes, played a key role in the origin and early evolution of different mammalian characters in non-mammaliaform cynodonts. However, while there are multiple studies on the biomechanical, behavioral, and physiological consequences of smaller sizes, few explore the evolutionary processes that lead to them. Here, we use body mass as a universal size measurement in phylogenetic comparative analyses to explore aspects of body size evolution in Cynodontia, focusing on the cynodont-mammal transition, and test the miniaturization hypothesis for the origin of Mammaliaformes. We estimated the body masses of 29 species, ranging from Theriocephalia to Mammaliaformes, providing the largest collection of Triassic cynodont body mass estimates that we know of, and used these estimates in analyses of disparity through time and RRphylo . Unexpectedly, our results did not support the miniaturization hypothesis. Even though cynodont body size disparity fell during the Late Triassic, and remained lower than expected under a purely Brownian motion model of evolution up until the Early Jurassic, we found that rates of body size evolution were significantly lower in prozostrodontians leading to the first Mammaliaformes than in other lineages. Evolution rates were higher in medium and large-sized taxa, indicating that size was changing more rapidly in those lineages and that small sizes were probably a persistent plesiomorphic character-state in Cynodontia.

Effect of the Fran CrossFit Workout on Oxygen Uptake Kinetics, Energetics, and Postexercise Muscle Function in Trained CrossFitters.

PURPOSE: Fran is one of the most popular CrossFit benchmark workouts used to control CrossFitters' improvements. Detailed physiological characterization of Fran is needed for a more specific evaluation of CrossFitters' training performance improvements. The aim of the study was to analyze the oxygen uptake (V˙O2) kinetics and characterize the energy system contributions and the degree of postexercise fatigue of the unbroken Fran. METHODS: Twenty trained CrossFitters performed Fran at maximal exertion. V˙O2 and heart-rate kinetics were assessed at baseline and during and post-Fran. Blood lactate and glucose concentrations and muscular fatigue were measured at baseline and in the recovery period. RESULTS: A marked increase in V˙O2 kinetics was observed at the beginning of Fran, remaining elevated until the end (V˙O2peak: 49.2 [3.7] mL·kg-1·min-1, V˙O2 amplitude: 35.8 [5.2] mL·kg-1·min-1, time delay: 4.7 [2.5] s and time constant: 23.7 [11.1] s; mean [SD]). Aerobic, anaerobic lactic, and alactic pathways accounted for 62% (4%), 26% (4%), and 12% (2%) of energy contribution. Reduction in muscle function in jumping ability (jump height: 8% [6%], peak force: 6% [4%], and maximum velocity: 4% [2%]) and plank prone test (46% [20%]) was observed in the recovery period. CONCLUSIONS: The Fran unbroken workout is a high-intensity effort associated with an elevated metabolic response. This pattern of energy response highlights the primary contribution of aerobic energy metabolism, even during short and very intense CrossFit workouts, and that recovery can take >24 hours due to cumulative fatigue.

Effect of Randall foils on the rowing propulsive cycle.

Rowing performance depends on the design and building materials used for competition. Recently, attempting to improve rowing performance, the Randall foil has been attached to the top edge of a rowing Big blade, making it spoon shaped. The current study aimed to analyse the differences between Big blades with and without Randall foils in force-related variables. Nineteen rowers performed two bouts of 90 s at maximal effort tethered rowing and differences were found in cycle average peak force (4.33 ± 1.46 vs. 5.26 ± 1.57 N/kg), propulsive cycle average time (1.79 ± 0.38 vs. 1.52 ± 0.24 N/kg.s) and rate of force development (8.79 ± 4.75 vs. 12.07 ± 4.60 N/kg/s) for Big blades with and without foils (respectively). Differences were also observed between the middle (4.79 ± 1.21 vs. 4.08 ± 1.48 N/kg) and final phases (4.86 ± 1.45 vs. 4.04 ± 1.47 N/kg) of the rowing effort for the cycle average peak force of Big blades with and without Randall foils. Data suggest a positive effect of these foils on the force-time curve profile. Future studies should focus on testing its influence on free on-water rowing.

Performance of cardiorespiratory-based sleep staging in patients using beta blockers.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Automatic sleep staging based on cardiorespiratory signals from home sleep monitoring devices holds great clinical potential. Using state-of-the-art machine learning, promising performance has been reached in patients with sleep disorders. However, it is unknown whether performance would hold in individuals with potentially altered autonomic physiology, for example under the influence of medication. Here, we assess an existing sleep staging algorithm in patients with sleep disorders with and without the use of beta blockers. METHODS: We analyzed a retrospective dataset of sleep recordings of 57 patients with sleep disorders using beta blockers and 57 age-matched patients with sleep disorders not using beta blockers. Sleep stages were automatically scored based on electrocardiography and respiratory effort from a thoracic belt, using a previously developed machine-learning algorithm (CReSS algorithm). For both patient groups, sleep stages classified by the model were compared to gold standard manual polysomnography scoring using epoch-by-epoch agreement. Additionally, for both groups, overall sleep parameters were calculated and compared between the two scoring methods. RESULTS: Substantial agreement was achieved for four-class sleep staging in both patient groups (beta blockers: kappa = 0.635, accuracy = 78.1%; controls: kappa = 0.660, accuracy = 78.8%). No statistical difference in epoch-by-epoch agreement was found between the two groups. Additionally, the groups did not differ on agreement of derived sleep parameters. CONCLUSIONS: We showed that the performance of the CReSS algorithm is not deteriorated in patients using beta blockers. Results do not indicate a fundamental limitation in leveraging autonomic characteristics to obtain a surrogate measure of sleep in this clinically relevant population. CITATION: Hermans L, van Meulen F, Anderer P, et al. Performance of cardiorespiratory-based sleep staging in patients using beta blockers. J Clin Sleep Med. 2024;20(4):575-581.

A sleep stage estimation algorithm based on cardiorespiratory signals derived from a suprasternal pressure sensor.

Automatic estimation of sleep structure is an important aspect in moving sleep monitoring from clinical laboratories to people's homes. However, the transition to more portable systems should not happen at the expense of important physiological signals, such as respiration. Here, we propose the use of cardiorespiratory signals obtained by a suprasternal pressure (SSP) sensor to estimate sleep stages. The sensor is already used for diagnosis of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) conditions, but besides respiratory effort it can detect cardiac vibrations transmitted through the trachea. We collected the SSP sensor signal in 100 adults (57 male) undergoing clinical polysomnography for suspected sleep disorders, including sleep apnea syndrome, insomnia, and movement disorders. Here, we separate respiratory effort and cardiac activity related signals, then input these into a neural network trained to estimate sleep stages. Using the original mixed signal the results show a moderate agreement with manual scoring, with a Cohen's kappa of 0.53 in Wake/N1-N2/N3/rapid eye movement sleep discrimination and 0.62 in Wake/Sleep. We demonstrate that decoupling the two signals and using the cardiac signal to estimate the instantaneous heart rate improves the process considerably, reaching an agreement of 0.63 and 0.71. Our proposed method achieves high accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity across different sleep staging tasks. We also compare the total sleep time calculated with our method against manual scoring, with an average error of -1.83 min but a relatively large confidence interval of ±55 min. Compact systems that employ the SSP sensor information-rich signal may enable new ways of clinical assessments, such as night-to-night variability in obstructive sleep apnea and other sleep disorders.

Studying sleep: towards the identification of hypnogram features that drive expert interpretation.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Hypnograms contain a wealth of information and play an important role in sleep medicine. However, interpretation of the hypnogram is a difficult task and requires domain knowledge and "clinical intuition." This study aimed to uncover which features of the hypnogram drive interpretation by physicians. In other words, make explicit which features physicians implicitly look for in hypnograms. METHODS: Three sleep experts evaluated up to 612 hypnograms, indicating normal or abnormal sleep structure and suspicion of disorders. ElasticNet and convolutional neural network classification models were trained to predict the collected expert evaluations using hypnogram features and stages as input. The models were evaluated using several measures, including accuracy, Cohen's kappa, Matthew's correlation coefficient, and confusion matrices. Finally, model coefficients and visual analytics techniques were used to interpret the models to associate hypnogram features with expert evaluation. RESULTS: Agreement between models and experts (Kappa between 0.47 and 0.52) is similar to agreement between experts (Kappa between 0.38 and 0.50). Sleep fragmentation, measured by transitions between sleep stages per hour, and sleep stage distribution were identified as important predictors for expert interpretation. CONCLUSIONS: By comparing hypnograms not solely on an epoch-by-epoch basis, but also on these more specific features that are relevant for the evaluation of experts, performance assessment of (automatic) sleep-staging and surrogate sleep trackers may be improved. In particular, sleep fragmentation is a feature that deserves more attention as it is often not included in the PSG report, and existing (wearable) sleep trackers have shown relatively poor performance in this aspect.

Heart rate response to cortical arousals in patients with isolated obstructive sleep apnea and with comorbid insomnia (COMISA).

PURPOSE: Comorbid insomnia often occurs in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), referred to as COMISA. Cortical arousals manifest as a common feature in both OSA and insomnia, often accompanied by elevated heart rate (HR). Our objective was to evaluate the heart rate response to nocturnal cortical arousals in patients with COMISA and patients with OSA alone. METHODS: We analyzed data from patients with COMISA and from patients with OSA matched for apnea-hypopnea index. Sleep staging and analysis of respiratory events and cortical arousals were performed using the Philips Somnolyzer automatic scoring system. Beat-by-beat HR was analyzed from the onset of the cortical arousal to 30 heartbeats afterwards. HR responses were divided into peak and recovery phases. Cortical arousals were separately evaluated according to subtype (related to respiratory events and spontaneous) and duration (3-6 s, 6-10 s, 10-15 s). RESULTS: A total of 72 patients with COMISA and 72 patients with OSA were included in this study. There were no overall group differences in the number of cortical arousals with and without autonomic activation. No significant differences were found for spontaneous cortical arousals. The OSA group had more cortical arousals related to respiratory events (21.0 [14.8-30.0] vs 16.0 [9.0-27.0], p = 0.016). However, the COMISA group had longer cortical arousals (7.2 [6.4-7.8] vs 6.7 [6.2-7.7] s, p = 0.024) and the HR recovery phase was prolonged (52.5 [30.8-82.5] vs 40.0 [21.8-55.5] beats/min, p = 0.017). Both the peak and the recovery phase for longer cortical arousals with a duration of 10-15 s were significantly higher in patients with COMISA compared to patients with OSA (47.0 [27.0-97.5] vs 34.0 [21.0-71.0] beats/min, p = 0.032 and 87.0 [47.0-132.0] vs 71.0 [43.0-103.5] beats/min, p = 0.049, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: The HR recovery phase after cortical arousals related to respiratory events is prolonged in patients with COMISA compared to patients with OSA alone. This response could be indicative of the insomnia component in COMISA.

Maternal cardiorespiratory coupling: differences between pregnant and nonpregnant women are further amplified by sleep-stage stratification.

Pregnancy complications are associated with abnormal maternal autonomic regulation. Subsequently, thoroughly understanding maternal autonomic regulation during healthy pregnancy may enable the earlier detection of complications, in turn allowing for the improved management thereof. Under healthy autonomic regulation, reciprocal interactions occur between the cardiac and respiratory systems, i.e., cardiorespiratory coupling (CRC). Here, we investigate, for the first time, the differences in CRC between healthy pregnant and nonpregnant women. We apply two algorithms, namely, synchrograms and bivariate phase-rectified signal averaging, to nighttime recordings of ECG and respiratory signals. We find that CRC is present in both groups. Significantly less (P < 0.01) cardiorespiratory synchronization occurs in pregnant women (11% vs. 15% in nonpregnant women). Moreover, there is a smaller response in the heart rate of pregnant women corresponding to respiratory inhalations and exhalations. In addition, we stratified these analyses by sleep stages. As each sleep stage is governed by different autonomic states, this stratification not only amplified some of the differences between groups but also brought out differences that remained hidden when analyzing the full-night recordings. Most notably, the known positive relationship between CRC and deep sleep is less prominent in pregnant women than in their nonpregnant counterparts. The decrease in CRC during healthy pregnancy may be attributable to decreased maternal parasympathetic activity, anatomical changes to the maternal respiratory system, and the increased physiological stress accompanying pregnancy. This work offers novel insight into the physiology of healthy pregnancy and forms part of the base knowledge needed to detect abnormalities in pregnancy.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We compare CRC, i.e., the reciprocal interaction between the cardiac and respiratory systems, between healthy pregnant and nonpregnant women for the first time. Although CRC is present in both groups, CRC is reduced during healthy pregnancy; there is less synchronization between maternal cardiac and respiratory activity and a smaller response in maternal heart rate to respiratory inhalations and exhalations. Stratifying this analysis by sleep stages reveals that differences are most prominent during deep sleep.

Autonomic arousal detection and cardio-respiratory sleep staging improve the accuracy of home sleep apnea tests.

Introduction: The apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), defined as the number of apneas and hypopneas per hour of sleep, is still used as an important index to assess sleep disordered breathing (SDB) severity, where hypopneas are confirmed by the presence of an oxygen desaturation or an arousal. Ambulatory polygraphy without neurological signals, often referred to as home sleep apnea testing (HSAT), can potentially underestimate the severity of sleep disordered breathing (SDB) as sleep and arousals are not assessed. We aim to improve the diagnostic accuracy of HSATs by extracting surrogate sleep and arousal information derived from autonomic nervous system activity with artificial intelligence. Methods: We used polysomnographic (PSG) recordings from 245 subjects (148 with simultaneously recorded HSATs) to develop and validate a new algorithm to detect autonomic arousals using artificial intelligence. A clinically validated auto-scoring algorithm (Somnolyzer) scored respiratory events, cortical arousals, and sleep stages in PSGs, and provided respiratory events and sleep stages from cardio-respiratory signals in HSATs. In a four-fold cross validation of the newly developed algorithm, we evaluated the accuracy of the estimated arousal index and HSAT-derived surrogates for the AHI. Results: The agreement between the autonomic and cortical arousal index was moderate to good with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.73. When using thresholds of 5, 15, and 30 to categorize SDB into none, mild, moderate, and severe, the addition of sleep and arousal information significantly improved the classification accuracy from 70.2% (Cohen's κ = 0.58) to 80.4% (κ = 0.72), with a significant reduction of patients where the severity category was underestimated from 18.8% to 7.3%. Discussion: Extracting sleep and arousal information from autonomic nervous system activity can improve the diagnostic accuracy of HSATs by significantly reducing the probability of underestimating SDB severity without compromising specificity.

Deciphering the Role of p60AmotL2 in Epithelial Extrusion and Cell Detachment.

Preserving an accurate cell count is crucial for maintaining homeostasis. Apical extrusion, a process in which redundant cells are eliminated by neighboring cells, plays a key role in this regard. Recent studies have revealed that apical extrusion can also be triggered in cells transformed by oncogenes, suggesting it may be a mechanism through which tumor cells escape their microenvironment. In previous work, we demonstrated that p60AmotL2 modulates the E-cadherin function by inhibiting its connection to radial actin filaments. This isoform of AmotL2 is expressed in invasive breast and colon tumors and promotes invasion in vitro and in vivo. Transcriptionally regulated by c-Fos, p60AmotL2 is induced by local stress signals such as severe hypoxia. In this study, we investigated the normal role of p60AmotL2 in epithelial tissues. We found that this isoform is predominantly expressed in the gut, where cells experience rapid turnover. Through time-lapse imaging, we present evidence that cells expressing p60AmotL2 are extruded by their normal neighboring cells. Based on these findings, we hypothesize that tumor cells exploit this pathway to detach from normal epithelia and invade surrounding tissues.