Self-reported symptoms and objective measures in idiopathic hypersomnia and hypersomnia associated with psychiatric disorders: a prospective cross-sectional study.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In some patients, it is difficult to correctly nosologically classify daytime sleepiness. Clinical manifestations may be nonspecific; on the basis of objective measures it is possible to determine the current severity of sleepiness, but they do not always allow accurate diagnosis. It is especially difficult to distinguish between idiopathic hypersomnia (IH) and hypersomnia associated with a psychiatric disorder (PSY). METHODS: To find significant differences between the IH and PSY groups, we included 67 patients (IH, n = 15; PSY, n = 52) in the study, focusing on differences in self-reported symptoms, evaluating current depressive symptoms using the Beck Depression Inventory-II score and personality traits measured by the Temperament and Character Inventory. All of the patients underwent polysomnography, the Multiple Sleep Latency Test, and ad libitum sleep monitoring. RESULTS: The patients with IH showed greater difficulty than those in the PSY group with waking up in the morning (P < .001) and complained of memory (P = .04) and attention deficit (P = .006). They also showed higher total sleep time (P < .001) and sleep efficiency (P = .007) and a shorter mean sleep latency on the Multiple Sleep Latency Test (P < .001). Nevertheless, the IH and PSY groups did not differ in Beck Depression Inventory scores or personality characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: IH is a syndrome in which depression/external life stressors and personality characteristics also play a role. Patients with IH may benefit from the cooperation of sleep specialists with psychotherapists/psychiatrists. CITATION: Busková J, Novák T, Miletínová E, et al. Self-reported symptoms and objective measures in idiopathic hypersomnia and hypersomnia associated with psychiatric disorders: a prospective cross-sectional study. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022;18(3):713-720.

No wink of sleep: Population sleep characteristics in response to the brexit poll and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

INTRODUCTION: Personal well-being, including people's sleep characteristics, is affected by a variety of factors, one example of which is wide-ranging high-impact public events. In this study, we use a large sleep database obtained through a smartphone application for sleep tracking via anonymized time-sampled data to study the effect of two political events with a wide-ranging impact on people's sleep characteristics: the Brexit referendum in June 2016, and the presidential election of Donald Trump in November 2016 METHOD: Using Sleep as Android - an actigraphy-based sleep monitoring smartphone application - we collected 10.5 million geo-located sleep records from more than 69,000 users in Europe and North America. Population-based changes in sleep around each of these two events, in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America, were assessed using a non-parametric bootstrap test RESULTS: The analysis revealed a significant reduction by 16 min and 21 s in the mean sleep duration of British people in the night after the Brexit poll (p < 0.001). Similarly, the analysis of the US presidential election revealed a significant 12 min 49 s drop in the mean sleep duration during the night following the event, in comparison with the whole studied region (p < 0.001), and an increase by 5 min and 9 s in the subsequent night (p = 0.0328). Additional analysis comparing the election night to comparable days in preceding years revealed that the actual reduction in sleep length may have been even greater. There is also an increase in the proportion of subjects with very short sleep CONCLUSIONS: The results demonstrate a significant impact of two specific major political events on population sleep characteristics. Our results further underline the potential of mobile applications and informatics approaches in general to provide data that enable us to investigate fundamental physiological variables over time and location.