Is sleep deficit associated with infertility and recurrent pregnancy losses? Results from a prospective cohort study.

Introduction: Biological rhythms, the innate cycle of changes in the body's physiological functions, are circadian if they have a 24-hour period. It is known that sleep is a key feature of human circadian rhythm but the relation between sleep and female fertility is largely unknown. This paucity of research is surprising given that circadian rhythms are paramount to human physiology and sleep is related to major female reproductive events.

Variation in stability of housekeeping genes in healthy and adhesion-related mesothelium.

Objective: To investigate the stability of various housekeeping genes (HKG) within healthy versus scarred peritoneal mesothelium. The use of HKG as internal controls for quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) studies is based on the assumption of their inherent stability. However, recent evidence suggests that this is not true for all HKG and that stability may be tissue specific and affected by certain pathologies.