This year’s Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young, for discovering “key genetic gears”of the body’s 24 hour biological clock. Their work identified genes and proteins, that work together in humans and animals to synchronize activities throughout the day and night, regulating sleep patterns, eating habits, blood pressure and hormo...

INTRODUCTION Creatinine concentration in plasma has been used to evaluate renal function. However, the endogenous creatinine clearance (CrCl) is more sensitive to this goal. OBJECTIVE Correlate the CrCl calculated from urinary collects of 12 h and 24 h. METHODS Ninety five volunteers (34-64 y) collected the urine for 24 h into two bottles: night, from 7 am to 7 pm and day, from 6 am to 7 pm...

AIM To analyse blood pressure characteristics during 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in children and to assess factors that influence its success over 24 hours and during patient-recorded awake (DAY) and sleep (NIGHT) periods. METHODS A total of 169 consecutive ambulatory blood pressure monitoring studies were conducted in 154 patients over 30 months. For each ambulatory study, w...

OBJECTIVE Absence of a late-night cortisol nadir is a consistent biochemical abnormality in patients with cortisol-producing adenoma. We evaluated the abnormality of late-night urinary free cortisol to creatinine ratio (late-night UFCCR) in patients with subclinical Cushing's syndrome (SCS). METHODS Fifty-eight patients with incidentally detected adrenocortical adenomas [SCS: 9; nonfunctionin...

Detecting the effectiveness of behavioral interventions to reduce infant night-waking requires valid sleep measures. Although viewed as an objective measure, actigraphy has overestimated night-waking. Sleep diaries are criticized for only documenting night-waking with infant crying. To support potential outcome measure validity, we examined differences between sleep diaries and actigraphy in de...

AIMS To evaluate the effects of a 24 h (h) physicians on-call duty (OCD) ('night shift') on 24 h electrocardiogram (ECG), heart rate variability, blood pressure (BP), and various biochemical serum and urine 'stress markers' compared with a 'regular' day at work. METHODS AND RESULTS The study was designed as a prospective randomized cross-over trial with each physician completing a 24 h (h) OC...

OBJECTIVES This study compared the effects of morning and evening dosing of amlodipine/valsartan combination on 24-h blood pressure (BP) in patients uncontrolled by amlodipine (5 mg). METHODS This was a multicenter study that used a prospective, randomized, open-label, blinded endpoint design. Patients with essential hypertension, who's ambulatory BP was uncontrolled after 4 weeks on amlodipi...

UNLABELLED The aim of this study was to determine whether the amount of growth response to mechanical compression and the underlying mechanism differed with night-time or day-time loading, relative to full time loading. Mechanical compression (nominally 0.1 MPa stress) was applied across tibial and tail vertebral growth plates of growing Sprague-Dawley rats. Four groups of animals were tested: ...