International Symposium - Day Two

The second day of presentations was more along the lines I am familiar with... human beings.

The talks ranged from sleep disordered breathing and fragmentation in people with COPD to standard anthropometric measurements predicting SDB in active NFL players.

The most interesting talk of the many interesting talks came later in the day and was delivered by Dr. Andrew Wellman of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. The title was "A technique for measuring ventilatory control stability (loop gain).

Loop gain is one of those concepts that comes up often in discussions about making CPAP therapy more comfortable for those with sleep apnea - Andrew explained this way - "Loop gain was calcualted by dividing the ventilatory response (the amount by wihich ventilation increased above eupnea when CPAP was turned back to the optimum pressure) by the ventiliatory disturbance (the amount by which ventilation was reduced below eupnea during the dial-down).

I am not doing his presentation justice, but Andrew Wellman is one to watch.

The second day concluded with a festive buffet dinner on the grounds of the Frick Mansion. The highlight of the dinner was the awarding of three young investigator awards in memory of Anne Elizabeth Suratt, the daughter of Paul Suratt one of the founders of the symposium.

The awards went to:

Kevin Grace from the University of Toronto his talk - "On the role of pedunculopontine tegmental neurons in the modulation of the REM sleep state and its respiratory phenotype"

Gaspard Montadon also from the Toronto - "State-dendent modulation of respiratory activity by perfusion of neuropeptides into the pre-Botzinger Complex of the adult rat in-vivo"

Josiane Broussard from the University of Chicago - "Experimental reducation of sleep duration or quality is associated with impaired insulin signaling in the adipocyte"

The symposium concludes today and I will be back with info and final thoughts. Let me say this, I am impressed with the enthusiasm of the young investigators - the field of sleep medicine is in good hands.