(Press-News.org) DARIEN, IL - A new study suggests that teen drivers who start class earlier in the morning are involved in significantly more motor vehicle accidents than peers with a later high school start time. The results underscore the importance of the "Awake at the Wheel" campaign of the National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project.
Results show that the weekday crash rate for teen drivers during the 2009 to 2010 school year was about 29 percent higher in Chesterfield County, Va., where high school classes began at 7:20 a.m., than in adjacent Henrico County, Va., where classes started at 8:45 a.m. Similar results were found for the 2010 to 2011 school year, when the weekday crash rate for 16-17 year old teens in Chesterfield County was about 27 percent higher than for those in Henrico County. In contrast, there was no difference in adult crash rates in the two counties for either year. A secondary analysis evaluating the causes and types of crashes found that Chesterfield County adolescents had a significantly higher rate of run-off-road crashes, which is a common feature of drowsy driving accidents.
"There are more and more data suggesting that insufficient sleep is common in our teens and that early high school start times are a contributor to teens' reduced sleep," said principal investigator and lead author Dr. Robert Vorona, associate professor in the Division of Sleep Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va. "Insufficient sleep appears to have deleterious consequences such as decrements in mood and increased risk taking, impaired academics and increased crash rates."
The results corroborate the findings of a previous study by Vorona's team that evaluated teen crash rates from 2007 to 2008. Results of the current study are published in the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
"When high school classes begin early in the morning, we ask teens to shine when their biological clock tells them to sleep," said American Academy of Sleep Medicine President Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler, a national spokesperson for the Healthy Sleep Project. "Many do not get adequate sleep as a result. Smarter school start times, that are more consistent with sleep needs, will improve students' safety, overall health, mood and academic performance."
Recently the Healthy Sleep Project launched the "Awake at the Wheel" campaign to increase public awareness of the risks of drowsy driving. More details are available at http://www.projecthealthysleep.org.
The study involved an analysis of data provided by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. During both school years there were more than 520 motor vehicle accidents involving teen drivers in Chesterfield County and more than 320 teen crashes in Henrico County.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adolescents get a little more than nine hours of nightly sleep for optimal health and daytime alertness during the critical transition from childhood to adulthood. The AASM advises parents and local school boards to work together to implement high school start times that allow teens to get the healthy sleep they need to meet their full potential.
A new report from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety estimates that drowsy driving may cause 328,000 motor vehicle accidents and 6,400 fatal crashes on U.S. roads each year. Previous data analysis by AAA also shows that the prevalence of drowsy driving crashes is highest among drivers between the ages of 16 and 24 years.
INFORMATION:
To request a copy of the study, "Adolescent Crash Rates and School Start Times in Two Central Virginia Counties, 2009-2011: A Follow-up Study to a Southeastern Virginia Study, 2007-2008," or the commentary, "High School Start Times and Death on the Road," or to arrange an interview with the study author or an AASM spokesperson, please contact Communications Coordinator Lynn Celmer at 630-737-9700, ext. 9364, or lcelmer@aasmnet.org.
The monthly, peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine is the official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional membership society that improves sleep health and promotes high quality patient centered care through advocacy, education, strategic research, and practice standards (http://www.aasmnet.org). The AASM encourages patients to talk to their doctor about sleep problems or visit http://www.sleepeducation.org for a searchable directory of AASM-accredited sleep centers.
About the National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project
The Healthy Sleep Project addresses the sleep health focus area of Healthy People 2020, which provides science-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the health of all
Americans. The sleep health objectives are to increase the medical evaluation of people with symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea, reduce vehicular crashes due to drowsy driving and ensure more Americans get sufficient sleep. For more information, visit http://www.sleepeducation.org/healthysleep.
VIDEO:
What is Nutrigenomix? Here's a primer.
Click here for more information.
Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) report that personalized dietary advice based on a person's genetic makeup improves eating habits compared to current "one-size-fits-all" dietary recommendations. The findings were published online today in the journal PLoS One.
"We conducted the first randomized controlled trial to determine the impact of disclosing DNA-based dietary advice on ...
Each year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) receives about 50,000 proposals for research funding in all fields of science and engineering from all corners of the country. NSF distinguishes among the proposals through a competitive review process built on two criteria: intellectual merit and broader impacts--will the research advance knowledge and will it benefit society?
Today, NSF released a special report to showcase broader impacts and examples of the diverse and far-reaching ways NSF-supported science touches our lives.
"Intellectual merit and broader impacts ...
Baltimore, Md., November 14, 2014--Most research on spinal cord injuries has focused on effects due to spinal cord damage and scientists have neglected the effects on brain function. University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) researchers have found for the first time that spinal cord injuries (SCI) can cause widespread and sustained brain inflammation that leads to progressive loss of nerve cells, with associated cognitive problems and depression.
The research, published recently in two articles, one in of the Journal of Neuroscience, the other in Cell Cycle, ...
Boston (Nov. 14, 2014) - After two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, acute trauma to the ears - such as ruptured eardrums - was immediately apparent to those caring for the victims. However, the full extent of the effect on the ears and hearing of victims was not fully recognized for weeks. In the end, more than 100 patients were evaluated for blast-related otologic injuries.
Almost immediately, Boston researchers set out to detail the types of otologic injury and report on the outcomes of patients undergoing otologic treatment. ...
BOZEMAN, Mont. - Hailstones from three Rocky Mountain storms formed around biological material, then bounced around the clouds picking up layers of ice, according to a new Montana State University study.
The discovery of a biological embryo extends previous findings about the formation of snow and rain, applies to hailstones globally and provides basic information about a little-studied topic, said the researchers who published their findings Nov. 6 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
"This is the first paper to really show that biological material ...
Researchers at Western University are using cutting-edge genetic mutation-analysis software developed in their lab to interpret mutations in tumour genome that may provide insight into determining which breast cancer tumours are more likely spread to other parts of the body and which ones won't.
Their findings are published today in the journal, Nature Scientific Reports.
"We are using a unique software program in our lab that looks at a type of mutation called a splicing mutation that is typically overlooked using current methods," said lead author on the study, Stephanie ...
Dartmouth researchers have developed a fluorescence imaging technique that can more accurately identify receptors for targeted cancer therapies without a tissue biopsy. They report on their findings in "Quantitative in vivo immunohistochemistry of epidermal growth factor receptor using a receptor concentration imaging approach," which was recently published in Cancer Research.
"Protein overexpression is a hallmark of certain cancers and is used in clinical oncology to personalize treatment through tumor detection, molecular therapies, and therapeutic monitoring," said ...
November 14, 2014 - While noninvasive alternatives are increasingly available, liver biopsy still provides essential information in some children with liver disease, according to a new position paper in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, official journal of the European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN) and the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
The position paper was ...
'We are now living in a world of ubiquitous location: from sat-navs to GPS enabled tablets and smartphones, our everyday activities leave digital and spatially located footprints. This presents tremendous opportunities for explicitly geographical analyses of all kinds of data.'
-Professor Lex Comber, University of Leicester
The work of geographers at the University of Leicester has helped to identify a postcode lottery that increases your risk of developing diabetes or obesity. This and other aspects of how geography can advance our understanding of society will form ...
Devavrat Shah's group at MIT's Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) specializes in analyzing how social networks process information. In 2012, the group demonstrated algorithms that could predict what topics would trend on Twitter up to five hours in advance; this year, they used the same framework to predict fluctuations in the prices of the online currency known as Bitcoin.
Next month, at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, they'll present a paper that applies their model to the recommendation engines that are familiar from websites ...
