His observations resonated greatly with regime scientists struggling to make headway at their own institutes. “John was trying to raise the level of discussion or awareness of the discussion that needed to be,” said Elizabeth Klerman, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School who works in the sleep department at Massachusetts General Hospital. take place. Frank Scheer, director of the Health Timing Biology Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was also impressed. “We are trying to improve the health of the most vulnerable, we have a responsibility to care for them, and despite this, they are in an environment that is not conducive to sleep,” he said. “I think his work is beautiful. He is making great strides in this area. “
While PNAS data reveals that when hospitals deliver drugs that are most likely to have more operational effects than medical implications, it cannot show whether that timing is harmful to patients. If not, why change it? Hogenesch’s team and collaborators at other hospitals are currently analyzing electronic medical records to see if they can show that how long certain common drugs are taken affects how well they work. their movements or not. This is harder than it sounds, because the data the hospital collects is primarily for billing, not research, and when patients receive services and medications are not always recorded. If the timing of procedures – drawing blood, vaccines, urine and other samples – in a patient’s electronic medical record is standard practice, it could greatly improve understanding. know ours, Zee noted. “Nowhere in your immunization record is it stated when you received it.” But doing that must be “too easy,” she added. “It’s all electronic.”
Any data collected from medical records will still be observational, but the more such data you have from a variety of sources, the more convincing it will be. In the meantime, researchers can create larger and more representative samples by looking at many small studies collectively in what’s called a meta-analysis. Last year, to help demonstrate that duration of medication can have a major impact, Hogenesch and colleagues released a pre-print, prior to peer review, a meta-analysis of previous clinical trials that included the time of day that subjects received one of 48 drug or surgical treatments. Unexpectedly, low-dose aspirin, which millions of people take daily to prevent cardiovascular disease and no guidance on when to take it, was the most time-sensitive: 8 out of 10 studies showed found it more effective when injected in the evening rather than in the morning.
Personal biomedicine may be the future. The time of our clocks varies from person to person, due to the setting of the sun, the light in the house, our genetic predisposition, our behavior, our age, each other. Scientists are still trying to develop a quick and easy way to tell what stage your organs are in. But for now, absolute precision isn’t necessary to improve the coordination and strength of your circadian rhythm. Circadian researchers generally recommend getting as much sunlight as possible during the day, especially when waking up, dimming the lights before bed and making your bedroom dark. (Parking in the US at standard time, not daylight, helps accomplish that.) Preload your calories earlier in the day. Above all, try to keep your schedule comparable throughout the week, including weekends. Helen Burgess, professor of psychiatry and co-director of the Sleep and Vascular Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan, tells me, “There is room here to think about optimizing overall health — improving mood, improve overall health. “We all get old. Many of us feel like we’re getting tired,” she added. “What are the little things I can do to feel better?”
In other words, the drug Circadian can improve our health, but most of us shouldn’t expect it to transform our lives anytime soon. However, there are exceptions to that rule whose unusual circumstances may lead to broader applications later on. As Hogenesch told me, “You learn from competing cases.”
Shortly after he arrived in Cincinnati, a colleague in Boston passed him an email from the parents of Jack Groseclose, a teenager with Smith-Kingsmore syndrome, an extremely rare condition caused by mutations in a single gene causes pain and convulsions, growth retardation. retarded, autistic, and prone to self-harm. In their letter, Mike and Kristen Groseclose explain that Jack is taking a drug to turn off the gene. It improved many of his symptoms, but his sleep was acting strangely. For more than a week, he will not sleep for longer than an hour or two and sleeps continuously instead. (A Fitbit his parents bought to track his activity showered them with congratulations.) Then, for 7 to 10 days, he would sleep for 14 hours. They wrote: “After 10 days of little or no sleep, his body began to break down. “He became shaky and unsteady, bursting with eczema.” Jack’s doctors were confused. Hoping to create an explanation, Groscloses included in their email a bar chart of Jack’s sleep cycle and a photo of him. Mike said to me, “He looks so pitiful. Kristen added, “We thought a vision aid could help.”
