Health Conditions

What is on the horizon?

Research has been focused on the combination of drug treatments and therapist ? guided education. Researchers have found that patients, who are treated with both drugs and cognitive-behavioral therapy, were able to maintain improvements in their sleep habits for a longer period of time.

Researchers at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago have been conducting studies to determine the cause of delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS), a disorder that affects several million Americans. People afflicted with DSPS can't fall asleep until several hours after their preferred bedtime. They have difficulty waking up in the morning to begin normal activities. DSPS is a disorder of the circadian rhythm, indicating it's caused by a malfunction within the body's internal 24-hour clock. The researchers' aim is to lay the foundation to determine what factors -- behavioral, psychological, sociological -- influence the cause of DSPS. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco are proposing that there are specific genes that cause this syndrome. The long term research goals are to find and identify these genes so that appropriate therapies can be developed.