Publications by authors named "Richard J Castriotta"

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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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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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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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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Low levels of the natural antioxidant uric acid (UA) and the presence of REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) are both associated with an increased likelihood of developing Parkinson's disease (PD). RBD and PD are also accompanied by basal ganglia dysfunction including decreased nigrostriatal and nigrocortical resting state functional connectivity. Despite these independent findings, the relationship between UA and substantia nigra (SN) functional connectivity remains unknown.

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Sexsomnia is a parasomnia consisting of sexual behavior during non-rapid eye movement sleep. To date, there have been 116 clinical cases of sexsomnia reported and most were treated with clonazepam. We present a case of an adult male with sexsomnia that started during his college days.

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Article Synopsis
  • COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, rapidly became a global health crisis, infecting millions and primarily affecting the respiratory system before spreading to other organs.
  • The virus leads to inflammation, cell death, and various complications, notably in the cardiovascular system, due to the role of ACE2 as a receptor for the virus.
  • This review discusses recent research on the clinical and laboratory findings related to COVID-19, focusing on its pulmonary and cardiovascular impacts and potential treatment strategies.
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Background: Wearable sleep monitors are of high interest to consumers and researchers because of their ability to provide estimation of sleep patterns in free-living conditions in a cost-efficient way.

Objective: We conducted a systematic review of publications reporting on the performance of wristband Fitbit models in assessing sleep parameters and stages.

Methods: In adherence with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, we comprehensively searched the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Cochrane, Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Web of Science databases using the keyword Fitbit to identify relevant publications meeting predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria.

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We compared performance in deriving sleep variables by both Fitbit Charge 2™, which couples body movement (accelerometry) and heart rate variability (HRV) in combination with its proprietary interpretative algorithm (IA), and standard actigraphy (Motionlogger® Micro Watch Actigraph: MMWA), which relies solely on accelerometry in combination with its best performing 'Sadeh' IA, to electroencephalography (EEG: Zmachine® Insight+ and its proprietary IA) used as reference. We conducted home sleep studies on 35 healthy adults, 33 of whom provided complete datasets of the three simultaneously assessed technologies. Relative to the Zmachine EEG method, Fitbit showed an overall Kappa agreement of 54% in distinguishing wake/sleep epochs and sensitivity of 95% and specificity of 57% in detecting sleep epochs.

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We compared performance of four popular interpretative algorithms (IAs), i.e., Cole-Kripke, Rescored Cole-Kripke, Sadeh, and UCSD, utilized to derive sleep parameters from wrist actigraphy data.

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Castriotta RJ, Chung P. Cutting for cures: bariatric surgery and obstructive sleep apnea. 2019;15(10):1391–1392.

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Water-based passive body heating (PBH) as a warm shower or bath before bedtime is often recommended as a simple means of improving sleep. We searched PubMed, CINAHL, Cochran, Medline, PsycInfo, and Web of Science databases and extracted pertinent information from publications meeting predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria to explore the effects of PBH on sleep onset latency (SOL), wake after sleep onset, total sleep time, sleep efficiency (SE), slow wave sleep, and subjective sleep quality. The search yielded 5322 candidate articles of which 17 satisfied inclusion criteria after removing duplicates, with 13 providing comparable quantitative data for meta-analyses.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Advanced treatments like ventricular assist devices (VADs) and heart transplants have improved CHF patient outcomes.
  • * Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) is common in CHF patients, making awareness and treatment of SDB crucial for better overall health management in those receiving advanced treatments.
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Congestive heart failure is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States, and left ventricular assist devices have revolutionized treatment of end-stage heart failure. Given that sleep apnea results in significant morbidity in these patients with advanced heart failure, practicing sleep physicians need to have an understanding of left ventricular assist devices. In this review, we summarize what is known about ventricular assist devices as they relate to sleep medicine.

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Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a form of MRI that has been used extensively to map in vivo the white matter architecture of the human brain. It is also used for mapping subcortical nuclei because of its general sensitivity to tissue orientation differences and effects of iron accumulation on the diffusion signal. While DTI provides excellent spatial resolution in individual subjects, a challenge is visualizing consistent patterns of diffusion orientation across subjects.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to test the idea that extremely obese individuals are more likely to experience sleep disordered breathing characterized by hypopneas rather than obstructive apneas.
  • It involved a review of 90 adults divided into two groups based on body mass index (BMI), where Group A had a BMI under 35, and Group B had a BMI of 45 or greater.
  • Results showed that the hypopnea/apnea ratio was significantly higher in the extremely obese group (Group B), indicating that this population experiences more hypopneas compared to those with a lower BMI.*
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Study Objectives: Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is a condition closely associated with Parkinson disease (PD). RBD is a sleep disturbance that frequently manifests early in the development of PD, likely reflecting disruption in normal functioning of anatomical areas affected by neurodegenerative processes. Although specific neuropathological aspects shared by RBD and PD have yet to be fully documented, further characterization is critical to discovering reliable biomarkers that predict PD onset.

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Study Objectives: This study assessed generalists' perceptions and challenges in providing care to sleep disorders patients and the role of sleep specialists in improving gaps in care.

Methods: A mixed-method approach included qualitative (semi-structured interviews, discussion groups) and quantitative (online surveys) data collection techniques regarding care of patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and shift work disorder (SWD).

Participants: OSA: generalists n = 165, specialists (internists, neurologists, psychiatrists, pulmonologists) n = 12; SWD: generalists n = 216, specialists n = 108.

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a global problem and causes long-term disability in millions of individuals. This is a major problem for both military- and civilian-related populations. The prevalence of sleep disorders in individuals with TBI is very high, yet mostly unrecognized.

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