Sapped: Exploring potential connections between devitalizing anemia and insomnia

Study reveals that iron-deficiency anemia is significantly associated with the likelihood of insomnia developing in adults

2021-04-22

(Press-News.org) A good night's sleep is essential for a healthy body and mind, for when we sleep is when the body resets, repairs, and refreshes itself. A lot of people, however, have trouble falling or staying asleep, a condition known as insomnia that affects up to 30% of the population. It is usually caused by an underlying psychiatric or clinical condition and is associated with a poorer quality of life. Recent genome wide analyses have revealed that a gene MEIS1 is linked with insomnia. Interestingly, this gene has also been implicated in restless leg syndrome and iron-deficiency anemia (IDA), the latter caused by a decrease in the oxygen transporter in the blood--hemoglobin (Hb). While studies have shown a correlation between anemia and sleep disorders in infants and children, less is known about their association in adults.

Thus, in a collaborative study published in END

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In rare cases, people who have been fully vaccinated against COVID and are immune to the virus can nevertheless develop the disease. New findings from The Rockefeller University now suggest that these so-called breakthrough cases may be driven by rapid evolution of the virus, and that ongoing testing of immunized individuals will be important to help mitigate future outbreaks. The research, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, reports results from ongoing monitoring within the Rockefeller University community where two fully vaccinated individuals tested positive for the coronavirus. Both had received two doses of either the Moderna or the Pfizer vaccine, with the second dose occurring more than two weeks before the positive test. One person was initially ...

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Fast reactions to future events are crucial. A boxer, for example, needs to respond to her opponent in fractions of a second in order to anticipate and block the next attack. Such rapid responses are based on estimates of whether and when events will occur. Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) and New York University (NYU) have identified the cognitive computations underlying this complex predictive behavior. How does the brain know when to pay attention? Every future event carries two distinct kinds of uncertainty: ...

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In the arms race "mankind against bacteria", bacteria are currently ahead of us. Our former miracle weapons, antibiotics, are failing more and more frequently when germs use tricky maneuvers to protect themselves from the effects of these drugs. Some species even retreat into the inside of human cells, where they remain "invisible" to the immune system. These particularly dreaded pathogens include multi-resistant staphylococci (MRSA), which can cause life-threatening diseases such as sepsis or pneumonia. In order to track down the germs in their hidouts and eliminate them, a team of researchers from Empa and ETH Zurich is now developing nanoparticles that use a completely different mode ...

Sculpting radiation beam spares lung cancer patients from severe, disabling complication

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BOSTON - For many patients with localized lung cancer (non-small-cell lung carcinoma and small cell lung carcinoma), high-dose radiation with concurrent chemotherapy is a potential cure. Yet this treatment can cause severe, acute inflammation of the esophagus (esophagitis) in about one in five patients, requiring hospitalization and placement of a feeding tube. A team of radiation oncologists at Mass General Cancer Center demonstrate in an early clinical trial that the radiation beam can be carefully "sculpted" to deliver the majority of a radiation dose directly to the tumor while effectively sparing tissues in the side of the ...

Individuals in lower-income US counties or high support for former President Trump continue to be less likely to socially distance

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Ann Arbor, April 22, 2021 - Using nearly a year of anonymous geolocation data from 15-17 million cell phone users in 3,037 United States counties, investigators have found that individuals with lower income per capita or greater Republican orientation were associated with significantly reduced social distancing throughout the study period from March 2020 through January 2021. Their findings are reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier. The associations persisted after adjusting for a variety of county-level demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Other county-level characteristics, such as the share of Black and Hispanic residents, were also associated ...

Intrinsic in-plane nodal chain and generalized quaternion charge protected nodal link in photonics

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Topological photonics has attracted a lot of attention recently. The application of topological band theory to photonics not only opens the door to novel devices, but also stimulates the exploration of new topological phases. In the photonic regime, symmetries that are unique to electromagnetic (EM) waves can intrinsically protect the band degeneracies in the momentum space. Topological systems realized using such symmetries are uniquely "photonic", having no counterparts in electronic or phononic systems. Among various topological features in momentum space, nodal chain is a special ...

Guilt and social pressure lead people to underreport COVID-19 protocol violations

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Guilt and social pressure lead people to underreport COVID-19 protocol violations, according to study of experimental data across 12 countries. Article Title: A guilt-free strategy increases self-reported non-compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures: Experimental evidence from 12 countries Funding: J.-F. Daoust acknowledges the financial support from SSPS Open Access (University of Edinburgh). M. Foucault and S. Brouard acknowledge the financial support from ANR - REPEAT grant (Special COVID-19), CNRS, Fondation de l'innovation politique, as well as regions Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie. Richard Nadeau and Éric Bélanger acknowledge the financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC/CRSH). M. Becher gratefully acknowledges ...

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