Reference:
Magnusdottir S. Role of Objectively Measuring Sleep in Drug Research. International Journal of Drug Research and Technology May 2018; 8 (2). http://www.ijdrt.com/drug-research-and-technology/article/view/163
Objectives:
Sleep quality and duration play an important role for overall health and wellbeing, as it is associated with development of various diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, making it important in research to have objective information of sleep physiology that either may affect or be affected by sleep. In the past, self-reported habitual sleep quality and duration has been the standard practice in research as a screening method. Although asking about sleep quality and duration seems uncomplicated, subjective questionnaires have been found to have a low correlation with objective measures of sleep.
Conclusions:
With advances in sensor technology, ambulatory methods to easily collect bio-signals like ECG are now available providing opportunities and possibilities to collect objective data for multiple nights for assessing sleep duration and sleep quality. Objective sleep data collection may have important implications for both research and clinical understanding of the inter-relationship between untreated sleep disorders and several of the most widely researched chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and depression.
Practical Significance:
Recording sleep for several nights provides information on night-to-night variability within and across individuals, providing a unique insight into research both in health and disease, information that has not been accessible to collect before and at the same time objective information offers both benefits and feedback on effectiveness of the therapy being tested.
