Publications by authors named "Michael Smolensky"

Chronotherapy is the timing of medications to circadian rhythms to optimize beneficial and minimize adverse outcomes. We reviewed the US Online Prescribers' Digital Reference for the specified administration schedule of medications prescribed to manage coronary heart disease (CHD) and its major risk factors. For arterial hypertension, dosing of terazosin and guanfacine is recommended in the evening and thiazide, thiazide-like, and sulfonamide diuretics morning; Verapamil (Verelan®) morning, its "PM" formulation evening, and long-acting diltiazem (Cardizem® LA), per clinical goal, morning or evening.

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Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a global health concern. Circadian medicine improves cardiovascular care by aligning treatments with our body's daily rhythms and their underlying cellular circadian mechanisms. Time-based therapies, or chronotherapies, show special promise in clinical cardiology.

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Introduction: Clinical hypertension trials typically rely on homeostatic principles, including single time-of-day office blood pressure (BP) measurements (OBPM), rather than circadian chronopharmacological principles, including ambulatory monitoring (ABPM) done around-the-clock to derive the asleep systolic BP (SBP) mean and sleep-time relative SBP decline - jointly the strongest prognosticators of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and true definition of hypertension - to qualify participants and assess outcomes.

Areas Covered: Eight chronopharmacological elements are indispensable for design and conduct of hypertension medication trials, mainly those on ingestion-time differences in effects, and also a means of rating quality of investigations. Accordingly, we highlight the findings and shortcomings of: (i) 155 such ingestion-time trials, 83.

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The conduct of molecular and laboratory animal circadian rhythm research has increased exponentially in the past few decades, such that today investigations are being performed by scientists of many diverse disciplines. Knowledge gained from past works is now being explored for translational applications to clinical medicine, often termed "circadian medicine," through the implementation of patient trials. However, these trials are being led, more often than not, by investigators who have little or no formal training and in-depth expertise in the methods of human circadian rhythm research, causing them to be deficient in design and produce dubious findings that have already led to unnecessary medical controversy at the expense of advances in patient care.

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Major objectives of this work were to: (1) substantiate the 24-hour pattern in the occurrence of childhood febrile seizures (CFSs) by a novel time series meta-analysis of past reported time-of-day data and (2) discuss its potential circadian rhythm-dependencies. Comprehensive search of the published literature retrieved eight articles that met inclusion criteria. Three investigations were conducted in Iran, two in Japan, and one each in Finland, Italy, and South Korea, representing a total of 2461 mostly simple febrile seizures of children who were on average about 2 years of age.

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An appreciable number of medicines have a recommended unique single time-of-day or asymmetrical or unequal-interval multiple-daily administration schedule. Many prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) products, according to administration time, can exert positive or negative impact on nighttime sleep and daytime wakefulness. Intuitively, medicines used to manage nighttime sleep and daytime wake disorders should be taken, respectively, at night before bedtime and morning after arising.

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We reviewed medication package inserts, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports, and journal publications concerning the 10 nonbiosimilar patient-applied (PA) testosterone (T) replacement therapies (TRTs) for intraday serum T patterning and blood pressure (BP) effects. Blood T concentration is circadian rhythmic in young adult eugonadal males, being highest around awakening and lowest before bedtime. T level and 24 h variation are blunted in primary and secondary hypogonadism.

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The sleep-wake cycle is regulated by circadian Process C and homeostatic Process S. Selective thermal stimulation (STS) of the cervical spine region enhances glabrous skin blood flow (GSBF) and augments body heat dissipation to increase distal-to-proximal skin gradient (DPG) causing decrease of core body temperature (CBT), which can shorten sleep onset latency (SOL) and improve sleep quality. A total of 11 young healthy/normal sleeper males challenged to go to bed (lights-off) 2 h earlier than usual were subjected in a randomised order to non-consecutive treatment and control night-time sleep sessions.

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Atherosclerosis, a chronic inflammatory disease of the arteries that appears to have been as prevalent in ancient as in modern civilizations, is predisposing to life-threatening and life-ending cardiac and vascular complications, such as myocardial and cerebral infarctions. The pathogenesis of atherosclerosis involves intima plaque buildup caused by vascular endothelial dysfunction, cholesterol deposition, smooth muscle proliferation, inflammatory cell infiltration and connective tissue accumulation. Hypertension is an independent and controllable risk factor for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD).

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This article summarizes the current literature and documents new evidence concerning drug-drug interactions (DDI) stemming from pharmacogenomic and circadian rhythm determinants of therapies used to treat common cardiovascular diseases (CVD), such as atherosclerosis and hypertension. Patients with CVD often have more than one pathophysiologic condition, namely metabolic syndromes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperglycemia, among others, which necessitate polytherapeutic or polypharmaceutic management. Interactions between drugs, drugs and food/food supplements, or drugs and genetic/epigenetic factors may have adverse impacts on the cardiovascular and other systems of the body.

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The pharmacodynamics of hypertension medications can be significantly affected by circadian rhythms in the biological mechanisms of the 24 h blood pressure (BP) pattern. Hypertension guidelines fail to recommend the time of day when patients, including those who require treatment with multiple medications, are to ingest BP-lowering therapy. We conducted a systematic review of published prospective trials that investigated hypertension medications for ingestion-time differences in BP-lowering, safety, patient adherence, and markers of target organ pathology.

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Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is the sudden, unexpected death due to abrupt loss of heart function secondary to cardiovascular disease. In certain populations living with cardiovascular disease, SCD follows a distinct 24-hour pattern in occurrence, suggesting day/night rhythms in behavior, the environment, and endogenous circadian rhythms result in daily spans of increased vulnerability. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute convened a workshop, Understanding Circadian Mechanisms of Sudden Cardiac Death to identify fundamental questions regarding the role of the circadian rhythms in SCD.

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Sudden cardiac death (SCD), the unexpected death due to acquired or genetic cardiovascular disease, follows distinct 24-hour patterns in occurrence. These 24-hour patterns likely reflect daily changes in arrhythmogenic triggers and the myocardial substrate caused by day/night rhythms in behavior, the environment, and endogenous circadian mechanisms. To better address fundamental questions regarding the circadian mechanisms, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute convened a workshop, Understanding Circadian Mechanisms of Sudden Cardiac Death.

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Borbély proposed an interacting two-component model of sleep regulation comprising a homeostatic Process S and a circadian Process C. The model has provided understanding of the association between core body temperature (CBT) as a key element of Process C that is deterministic of sleep onset and offset. However, it additionally provides a new perspective of the importance of the thermoregulatory mechanisms of Process C in modulating the circadian rhythm of arterial blood pressure (ABP).

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Several prospective studies consistently report elevated asleep blood pressure (BP) and blunted sleep-time relative systolic BP (SBP) decline (non-dipping) are jointly the most significant prognostic markers of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, including heart failure (HF); therefore, they, rather than office BP measurements (OBPM) and ambulatory awake and 24 h BP means, seemingly are the most worthy therapeutic targets for prevention. Published studies of the 24 h BP pattern in HF are sparse in number and of limited sample size. They report high prevalence of the abnormal non-dipper/riser 24 h SBP patterning.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study explores how circadian rhythms can influence the effectiveness and safety of hypertension medications by affecting their pharmacokinetics (absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination) and pharmacodynamics (effects on blood pressure).
  • - A comprehensive review of 155 human trials (involving nearly 24,000 participants) found that most studies (83.9%) showed significant benefits when hypertension medications were taken at bedtime rather than in the morning, including better blood pressure control and improved kidney and heart health.
  • - The authors noted inconsistencies in some trial findings due to variations in study protocols, and they proposed a new quality assessment method to standardize future research based on guidelines from relevant chronobiology organizations.
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Combined evidence of published prospective outcome trials and meta-analyses substantiate elevated asleep blood pressure (BP) and blunted sleep-time relative BP decline (non-dipping), regardless of wake-time office BP and awake or 24 h BP means, are jointly the most highly significant independent prognostic markers of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and worthy therapeutic targets for prevention. Nonetheless, current guidelines continue to recommend the diagnosis of hypertension, when based on ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM), rely, solely, on either the 24 h or "daytime" BP means. They also fail to recommend the time to treat patients.

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Pharmacokinetics of hypertension medications is significantly affected by circadian rhythms that influence absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination. Furthermore, their pharmacodynamics is affected by ingestion-time differences in kinetics and circadian rhythms comprising the biological mechanism of the 24 h blood pressure (BP) pattern. However, hypertension guidelines do not recommend the time to treat patients with medications.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to enhance sleep quality assessment using a new interpretative algorithm (IA) based on deep learning, utilizing wrist actigraphy data and heart rate variability (HRV) metrics.
  • Data from 222 participants with both polysomnography (PSG) and wrist actigraphy were analyzed to determine the best combination of inputs for the new algorithm, named Haghayegh Algorithm (HA).
  • The HA model outperformed existing IAs in accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity while showing comparable results to PSG for key sleep parameters and demonstrating good agreement in detecting sleep stages, including REM and NREM.
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Current hypertension guidelines fail to provide a recommendation on when-to-treat, thus disregarding relevant circadian rhythms that regulate blood pressure (BP) level and 24 h patterning and medication pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. The ideal purpose of ingestion-time (chronopharmacology, i.e.

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Circadian rhythms impact cardiac and vascular pathophysiology, resulting in 24-hour patterning of symptoms and life-threatening/ending events (chronopathology), plus kinetics and dynamics of medications (chronopharmacology), resulting in administration-time differences in efficacy and safety. Scheduling medications according to circadian rhythm determinants (chronotherapy) can improve treatment effects, for example, before dinner/bedtime ingestion of cholesterol-lowering medications and acetylsalicylic acid, respectively, exerts enhanced control of hypercholesterolemia and after-awakening peak of platelet aggregation; bedtime ingestion of conventional hypertension medications optimizes normalization of sleep-time blood pressure (BP)-strongest independent BP marker of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk-and most effectively prevents (chronoprevention) CVD morbidity and mortality. Exploration of chronotherapeutic strategies to improve management of cardiac arrhythmias and vascular pathophysiology is still awaited.

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