Sleep medicine - ever more needed in the industrialised world

Last Friday was European Researchers' Night - an event involving a variety of science-oriented programmes for the public which ran late into the night. In Prague, one of the topics discussed was sleep.

Humans spend about one third of their lives sleeping. Many people take it for granted that they fall asleep in the evening and wake up rested in the morning. But about one half of the population of this planet is at risk of developing one of almost a hundred sleep disorders - including snoring - which can have serious consequences for their health. That's why a discipline called sleep medicine is there to help treat sleep disorders, from insomnia to narcolepsy, or the inability to resist sleep.

Sleep medicine has a long history in the Czech Republic. Neurology professor and head of the First Medical Faculty's Neurological Clinic at Charles University, Sona Nevsimalova, is one of the researchers who carry on the tradition started in the 1950s by Professor Bedrich Roth.

"We were one of the first sleep laboratories in Central Europe. It was more than 50 years ago. Professor Roth was the head of this laboratory and I think that he was very, very famous in the whole world because he had the largest material of patients, particularly patients suffering from narcolepsy and hypersomnia - excessive daytime sleepiness. He collected more than 1,000 patients and I remember he was one of the pioneers of this topic in the whole world. He was also one of the founders of the World Federation of Sleep Medicine and he was also the founding father of sleep medicine here in Czechoslovakia."

In her research Professor Sona Nevsimalova specialises in sleep disorders in children. In 2000 she determined that a gene mutation was responsible for narcolepsy in one of her boy patients - a unique case so far.

"I cooperated for many years with Stanford University and five years ago we received - together with Professor Emmanuel Mignot the prize of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. It was a prize for the first gene mutation found in a narcoleptic child."

Last year Profesor Nevsimalova presented her research at a Congress of the European Sleep Research Society held in Prague. Despite the advances in Czech sleep research the incidence of sleep disorders in Czech population is no different from the rest of the industrialised world.

"I think that it is the same. But I hope that now what has improved is the diagnostics of these diseases and also therapeutic possibilities."