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Published On May 3, 2009
CLINICAL RESEARCH
To Sleep, Perchance to Walk
With insomnia drugs yielding bizarre side effects, sleepwalking has wandered back into public consciousness.
5:1
Act and scene of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in which Lady Macbeth is spied sleepwalking
6
Number of diagnostic criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association for sleepwalking disorder
1–7
Approximate percentage of adults who experience a sleepwalking episode, compared with 0.5% who suffer from sleepwalking disorder
10
Number of times more likely that sleepwalking will occur in close relatives of sleepwalkers than in the general public, suggesting a genetic component
6.9
Percentage of sleepwalking reported for girls; 5.7% for boys
15
Age by which occasional episodes of sleepwalking usually disappear without treatment
70
Approximate number of cases of homicidal somnambulism, or sleepwalk murder, reported in history
1846
Year in which the lawyer of Albert Tirrell, accused of murder, mounted a sleepwalking defense
13
Number of sleep medications, including Ambien and Lunesta, for which the Food and Drug Administration has requested added warning language about “complex sleep-related behavioral side effects,” such as driving, making phone calls, preparing and eating food, and having sex while asleep
Dispatches
What Makes a Kid Clumsy? More research into coordination disorders shows why some children are more prone to trip, fumble and spill the milk.
Eyes in the Sky Satellite data can be used to assess the health impact of dust storms and the spread of mosquito-borne diseases. Additional applications could be on the horizon.
Could This One Change Help Curb the Opioid Crisis? To prescribe an effective bridge to addiction treatment, emergency physicians must get special training and receive a waiver. Making that process easier—or eliminating the requirement altogether—could make a big impact.
One Thing Leads to the Next Robert Lefkowitz is best known for revealing the mechanism behind hundreds of drugs in use today. But he thinks of himself as a storyteller first and has a new book out to make his case.
Podcast: The Research Year That Was Medical research labs have faced a difficult stretch of closed buildings and competing priorities. Yet they have also produced milestone discoveries—and not only on COVID-19.
The Shape of Us Two milestone discoveries in protein modeling promise to change the fundamentals of drug discovery.
Universal Flu Vaccines Move Forward In the shadow of coronavirus vaccine development, another vaccine was making solid progress.
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