Lu Lin, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

I. Development status of sleep medicine

Sleep is a highly conserved life phenomenon, closely related to biological evolution, species Reproduction and individual survival and development are closely related, and sleep brain function plays an important role in normal life activities and the occurrence of major diseases. With the rapid development of society, mental stress increases and the incidence of sleep-wake disorders increases, which is also for many mental diseases, such as anxiety disorders, depression disorders, schizophrenia, and abnormal brain information processing: such as inattention, memory loss, Abnormal decision-making is also closely related to many common chronic diseases such as hypertension, myocardial infarction, dementia, obesity, and immune dysfunction. Therefore, sleep-wake disorder is a “chronic killer” that cannot be ignored. The two most common types of sleep disorders are insomnia disorder and sleep-disordered breathing. Among the elderly population over 60 years old in my country, the incidence of sleep disorder is about 35.9%, and the incidence of sleep disorder among adolescents in my country is 26%. Insufficient sleep has many negative effects on health. There have been detailed statistics internationally: sleep problems can cause an annual economic loss of 680 billion US dollars in five countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Japan. In 2019-2020, due to sleep problems in Health care costs in Australia were $35.4 billion, including about $13.1 billion for sleep-disordered breathing, $13.3 billion for insomnia, and $9 billion for restless legs syndrome. With the 2020 new crownpneumonia epidemic, in the follow-up of adults before and after the epidemic, the incidence of insomnia increased from 25.4% to 32.2%. An online survey of more than 50,000 residents found that in the new crown During the pneumonia epidemic, the psychological problems of the Chinese people were generally more prominent, and the incidence of insomnia was as high as 29.2%.

II. Research progress on sleep and health

Removal of metabolites in the brain during sleep is helpful for homeostasis regulation. Make up for the metabolic damage caused by staying up late; sleep deprivation affects the inflammatory response, which can lead to changes in the metabolic level of short-chain fatty acids in the human intestine; in the awake state, the accumulation of DNA damage in neurons will increase sleep pressure, during sleep, intracellular Efficient DNA repair takes place. A number of studies have confirmed that sleep disorders and type 2 diabetes, sleep duration and cardiovascular disease, sleep and dementia, sleep disorders and mental diseases and other chronic diseases have an important relationship with the occurrence and development. Researchers from the University of California in the United States observed three million pregnant women for six years and found that sleep disorders during pregnancy significantly increased the risk of preterm birth. Among them, pregnant women with insomnia disorder had a 30% higher risk of preterm birth. Patients with sleep-disordered breathing Increase by 50%, the journal Nature published a special review, calling for attention to the sleep problems of pregnant women, a special group, and suggesting the development of more sleep intervention methods suitable for special groups such as pregnant women. Other studies have shown that ambient temperature and light can affect sleep.

III. Future Prospects of Sleep Medicine

An article published in Nature in 2013 pointed out that in order to study the nature of sleep, it is urgent to carry out a multi-disciplinary research project. “The Human Sleep Program” to improve people’s health and quality of life in the most effective way possible. China Brain Science Program. The current problem is that most of the medical workers currently engaged in sleep diagnosis and treatment are doctors in respiratory, stomatology, otolaryngology, psychiatry and other disciplines, not with a professional background in sleep medicine, and there is a certain bias in the identification of sleep diseases. Taking sleep medicine as an independent disciplinary system is a necessary way to ensure the vigorous development of sleep medicine. To build a standardized, standardized and integrated sleep-related database and research platform of multi-dimensional indicators, and to establish a multi-modal single-community system integrating prediction, diagnosis and treatment, and rehabilitation. Disease-integrated information mining method, creating a new model of sleep medicine research and promoting the intersection of sleep medicine and multidisciplinary.