Jazz Pharma's sleep disorder drug

A view shows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland August 14, 2012. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo

Health | Wed Jan 18, 2017 | 4:45am IST

FDA approves generic version of Jazz Pharma's sleep disorder drug

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it had approved the first generic version of Xyrem, Jazz Pharmaceuticals Plc's drug to treat patients with narcolepsy, a kind of sleeping disorder.
The approved generic is developed by Roxane Laboratories Inc, the FDA told Reuters.

Jazz Pharma's shares, which lost about 22 percent of their value in 2016, were down 6.6 percent at $108.00 in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

Xyrem is the only approved treatment for both excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy in patients with narcolepsy, a chronic neurological disorder.
Cataplexy, one of the primary and the most debilitating symptoms of narcolepsy, causes a sudden loss of muscle control, leading to physical collapse. (bit.ly/2jHzIS9)

About 70 percent people with narcolepsy suffer from cataplexy, the FDA said.
Xyrem generated sales of $816.4 million in the nine months ended Sept. 30, representing about 75 percent of Jazz Pharma's net product sales.

(Reporting by Divya Grover in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)


Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/us-fda-approval-xyrem-idINKBN15133P?feedType=RSS&feedName=health&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

A mind at ease = better sleep.

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This screen time might actually help you sleep

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Tuesday Posted Dec 27, 2016

By Benedict Carey The New York Times


The same digital screens that have helped nurture a generation of insomniacs can also help restore regular sleep, researchers report. In a study, more than half of chronic insomniacs who used an automated online therapy program reported improvement within weeks and were sleeping normally a year later.

The new report, in JAMA Psychiatry, is the most comprehensive to date suggesting that many garden-variety insomniacs could benefit from the gold standard treatment - cognitive behavior therapy - without ever having to talk to a therapist.


At least one in 10 adults has diagnosable insomnia, defined as broken, inadequate slumber at least three nights a week for three months running or longer.

"I've been an insomniac all my life, I've tried about everything," said Dale Love-Callon, 70, a math tutor in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, who recently used the software. "I don't have it 100 percent conquered, but I'm sleeping much better now."

The new trial tested the digital therapy in a broad, diverse group of longtime insomniacs. Most had used medication or supplements, and some still did.

"These results suggest that there are a group of patients who can benefit without the need of a high-intensity intervention," like face-to-face therapy, said Jack Edinger, a professor at National Jewish Health in Denver. "We don't know yet exactly who they are - the people who volunteer for a study like this in first place are self-motivated - but they're out there."

Researchers at the University of Virginia recruited 303 people ages 21 to 65 over the internet. Half were randomly assigned to receive education and advice on insomnia. The other half got a six-week focused online therapy product, called SHUTi.


Some of the researchers, as well as the university, have a stake in this product, which costs $135 for 16 weeks of access. None of those connected to the company analyzed the data or had access to it, said Lee Ritterband, the lead author and a developer of the online therapy.

SHUTi is not the only product on the market. Sleepio, which costs $300 for a year's access, also incorporates cognitive therapy. Both incorporate the techniques of cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia. Some of those techniques date back decades. One is called sleep restriction, in which people set a regular "sleep window" and work to stick to it. Another is called stimulus control, an attempt to break the association between lying in bed and activities like streaming video and eating.


Finally, the therapy prompts people to log in daily and record each night's sleep in some detail; it then tailors weekly sessions based on those entries.

Love-Callon's problem, for example, was waking up too early, at 4 a.m. or thereabouts. The online program, she said, instructed her to get out of bed when that happened, and sit and read for 40 minutes - which is more likely to induce sleepiness than, say, shopping online.

"And it has worked," she said. "I get drowsy while reading and have been able to go back to bed and fall asleep."



This screen time might actually help you sleep - Ocala

 http://dlvr.it/N0ZgrF - #CT #CBT



 Source: http://www.ocala.com/news/20161227/this-screen-time-might-actually-help-you-sleep?start=4


 

the link between insomnia and depression.

The new trial that improves insomnia

It's not at all unusual for people with depression to have difficulty sleeping. Now a trial has focussed on treating the insomnia in the hope that it improves the depression, rather than vice versa. Professor of Mental Health, Helen Christensen, and Dr Aliza Werner-Saidler, a Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist at the Black Dog Institute at the University of New South Wales in Australia, showed Claudia Hammond how an online programme called SHUTi - developed by the University of Virginia and commercially available - helped people with insomnia and depression.
First broadcast on All in the Mind, 7 December 2016.

Release date:

7 December 2016

This clip is from

Radio 4 in Four

http://bbc.in/2h0g58Y

It focuses on the link between insomnia and depression.

 Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04kjy4p?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_radio_4&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=radio_and_music

Chronic insomnia's association with increased medical and psychiatric morbidity

Chronic insomnia's association with increased medical and psychiatric morbidity:

Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia

Psychology / Psychiatry

Could less time in bed prevent chronic insomnia?

Written by Catharine Paddock PhD

Published: Tuesday 14 June 2016

---

People who find it difficult to fall or stay asleep may be surprised to learn that new research suggests they should try spending less time in bed as a way to prevent chronic insomnia. The finding supports the idea that the way to tackle insomnia is to avoid increasing sleep opportunity - instead, it should be decreased to match sleep ability.

 

The study found that the participants who developed acute insomnia and recovered from it reduced the amount of time they spent in bed, whereas the participants who went on to develop chronic insomnia increased it.

In fact, the study - led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) in Philadelphia - found that what may have helped 70-80 percent of participants with short-term or acute insomnia from allowing the problem to become chronic or long-term was a natural tendency to restrict time in bed.

For example, if they fell asleep at 11 p.m. and intended to get up at 7:30 a.m. but found themselves awake at 5:30 a.m., then they would get up anyway and start their day, rather than lie awake in bed.

Study leader Michael Perlis, an associate professor in psychiatry and director of the Penn Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program, says people who go on to develop chronic insomnia typically do the opposite - they extend what he and his colleagues call their "sleep opportunity."

He explains:
"They go to bed early, get out of bed late, and they nap. While this seems a reasonable thing to do, and may well be in the short term, the problem in the longer term is it creates a mismatch between the individual's current sleep ability and their current sleep opportunity; this fuels insomnia."

The research findings feature at SLEEP 2016, the 30th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC, in Denver, CO, June 11-16, 2016.

Getting up and getting on with your day rather than staying in bed trying to sleep is not only a useful tip if you have acute insomnia, but it is now also a formal part of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for chronic insomnia.

The American College of Physicians now recommend CBT as the initial, first-line treatment for chronic insomnia. They came to this decision after reviewing evidence that CBT can improve symptoms without the side effects of sleep medication.

Good sleepers spent less time in bed

Every year, 20-50 percent of Americans suffer from acute insomnia, which is defined as difficulty falling or staying asleep on three or more nights a week for between 2 weeks and 3 months. 

When the condition persists for more than 3 months, it is classed as chronic insomnia, which the authors note affects some 10 percent of Americans.

As with sleep loss, chronic insomnia can impair mental and physical performance, and increase the risk of developing a mental health disorder such as depression or substance abuse. 

It can also increase risk of chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

Prof. Perlis and colleagues studied how time spent in bed varied in 461 participants over a 6-month period. At the start of the period, all participants were good sleepers, that is, they were not experiencing insomnia.

Over the period, 394 participants remained good sleepers throughout, 36 developed acute insomnia and recovered from it, and 31 developed acute insomnia that progressed to chronic insomnia. The data for the evaluation came from sleep diaries kept by the participants and analyzed by the researchers.

The results showed that in the good sleep phase, the group that remained good sleepers spent less time in bed than the group that developed and recovered from acute insomnia. Also, the time spent in bed at the start of the period did not differ significantly for the two insomnia groups.

However, during the acute insomnia phase, the group that recovered from this condition reduced the time they spent in bed compared with what it was at the start of the period, whereas the group whose acute insomnia turned into chronic insomnia increased it.

The researchers conclude that these preliminary results are consistent with the 3P model of insomnia - that extending sleep opportunity may help acute insomnia progress to chronic insomnia. They note that this is the first research to show such evidence.

The 3P model was developed by the late Arthur Spielman in the 1980s. 

It proposes that people susceptible to insomnia have some Predisposing characteristics, that 
the condition is triggered by some Precipitating event, and is perpetuated by attitudes and Practices that develop in response to insomnia and maintain it. An example of a practice that maintains the condition is the tendency to expand sleep opportunity to make up for sleep loss.

Prof. Perlis says acute insomnia is likely a natural part of the human condition, where the fight or flight response is a trigger for sleeplessness - it keeps you awake regardless of the time of day or night, in case there is a threat to life or quality of existence. Either way, sleep is not a good idea as long as the threat remains.

"It is understandable that sleeplessness has persisted as an adaptive response to such circumstances. In contrast, it's hard to imagine how chronic insomnia is anything but bad - and the clinical research data support this position given chronic insomnia's association with increased medical and psychiatric morbidity."

= Prof. Michael Perlis

Discover how people who sleep late are more likely to have an unhealthy diet.

Written by Catharine Paddock PhD

Link: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/310949.php

Stick to a Bedtime

 

 Photo: SuperStock/Getty Images

To Stick to a Bedtime, Think of Sleep Like Exercise

By Cari Romm 

Most people I know, when they say they try to stick to a bedtime, actually have two. There’s the time when they begin to cut themselves off from the day, when they physically climb under the covers and lay their head on the pillow. And then there’s the time after that — maybe a Netflix episode later, maybe after some Twitter scrolling and Instagram stalking and a little online window-shopping — when they actually close their eyes and try to drift off. A few years ago, scientists put a name to this phenomenon: “bedtime procrastination,” when you put off going to bed for no reason other than the fact that you can.

At this point, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that that staring at a screen right before bed (something 95 percent of Americans admit to doing) isn’t great for your sleep habits, and not just because it can cause temporary blindness — the blue light emitted by digital devices can seriously mess with the hormones that cause sleepiness, throwing off your circadian rhythm. And you may have heard the conventional wisdom about using your bed only for sleep and sex, a rule that helps you eliminate other nighttime distractions. And yet, for some mysterious reason, the lure of wasting time is powerful, even when it comes at the expense of an extra hour’s shut-eye.

But in a recent Wall Street Journal column, behavioral scientist Dan Ariely offered one way to beat bedtime procrastination: Enlist someone else to help you do it.

“A firm partner would do fine,” he wrote, but if you sleep solo (or next to a pushover), “you could ask a close friend to be your ‘sleep cop’ and promise to send him or her a picture of you in pajamas every night at 10.” 

If you think of sleep as just another hard-to-stick-to habit, the advice instantly feels familiar: Past research, after all, has shown that you’re more likely to keep up with a workout plan if you commit to working out with a friend. Ditto with a diet. Look up any list of tips on how to commit to a goal, or fulfill a New Year’s resolution, and the odds are good that social support will be on it. Bedtime’s no different — it’s hard to stick to, but easier if you’ve got someone looking out for you.

The Wall Street Journal

Tags: sleep procrastination

 

 

 Source: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/11/to-stick-to-a-bedtime-think-of-sleep-like-exercise.html 

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The end of jet lag? Discovery of gene that is key to setting sleep cycles could lead to drugs that reset body clocks

• Scientists studied the brains of fruit flies to explore our sleep cycle
• They found proteins that are key to setting our circadian rhythm
• The proteins change the fly's behaviour with the time of day
• The findings could lead to new drugs for jet lag and sleep disorders

By Harry Pettit For Mailonline

Published: 20:00 GMT, 7 November 2016 | Updated: 21:39 GMT, 8 November 2016

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Our internal clocks are crucial to everyday life, like a silent metronome ticking in our brains that gently guides us to and from sleep.

Now, scientists have found a gene that is key to conducting our circadian rhythms - physical, mental and behavioural changes that follow a 24-hour cycle.

They hope this will provide a platform for the development of drugs targeting key proteins involved in our sleep cycles.

If so, drugs to treat common problems such as jet lag or sleep disorders could one day emerge.

Researchers have found a gene that is key in conducting our circadian rhythms, they hope that their work will be used to develop drugs for treating common sleep-related problems such as jet lag or sleep disorders (stock image)

THE QUASIMODO GENE 

The research builds on previous work from Professor Stanewsky and colleagues examining what they call the 'Quasimodo' gene.

The gene takes its name from the peculiar observation that some mutant versions give the Drosophila flies hunched backs.

The researchers used a red fluorescent protein to illuminate 'clock neurons' within the brains, which are important for the insect's circadian rhythm. 

They then recorded the clock neurons' electrical activity.

The scientists showed Quasimodo is key to the regulation of light responses in the clock neurons, thereby controlling the circadian rhythm.

They found the fly clock neurones were more excitable during the day than they were at night, supporting the theory they are key to cicardian time-keeping.

The scientists, from the University of Bristol, studied the brains of Drosophila fruit flies to try and crack the code to circadian rhythms.

These flies make for good test subjects because they have a strong 24-hour body cycle, or cicardian rhythm.

Drosophila is Latin for 'dew loving' because the flies are more active at dusk and dawn.

The fly's brain is made up of over 100,000 neurones, which can fit on the head of a pin.

But only 100 of these microscopic cells make up the insect's all-important body clock.

Each clock neuron encases clock genes, which switch each other on and off every day and night.

The team found three previously undiscovered proteins, working in unison on the surface of each clock neurone.

The proteins grant the clock responsiveness to light, meaning it can modify the behaviour of the flies with the time of day.

'To be useful for an organism, circadian clocks need to be synchronised (or reset) to the natural environment cycles of light and temperature,' said Dr Hodge from Bristol's School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience.

'This is much like how you need to reset your alarm clock or watch when you change time zone.'

The scientists, from the University of Bristol, studied the brains of Drosophila fruit flies to try and crack the code to circadian rhythms. The front of the Drosophila brain showing the 100 clock neurons and how light interacts with them to drive the circadian rhythm

Detail of a clock neuron, highlighted using a red fluorescent protein, with a recording electrode (from below and middle)

The findings could ultimately reveal new membrane drug targets for jet lag and sleep disorders.

They will also help scientists to better understand the relationship between body clocks and health, as well as ageing and neurodegenerative diseases.

Future studies aim to characterise the membrane clock in further detail and to see if it is present in mammals.

WHAT ARE CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS?

Circadian rhythms are physical, mental and behavioural changes that follow a 24-hour cycle.

They respond primarily to light and darkness in an organism's environment.

They are found in most living things, including animals, plants and many tiny microbes.

Circadian rhythms are driven by our biological clocks.

They are produced by natural factors within the body, but they are also affected by signals from the environment.

Light is the main cue influencing circadian rhythms, turning genes on or off that control an organism's internal clocks.

The study of circadian rhythms is called chronobiology.

Link:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3905786/The-end-jet-lag-Discovery-gene-key-setting-sleep-cycles-lead-drugs-reset-body-clocks.html