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STUDY OBJECTIVES: There is a paucity of contemporary prevalence estimates for common sleep disorders of insomnia, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and restless legs syndrome. We aimed to assess the prevalence of clinically significant common sleep disorders in a middle-aged community sample. METHODS: Parents of participants in the community-based Raine Study underwent assessments between 2015 and 2017, including comprehensive questionnaires, anthropometric measures, and in-laboratory polysomnography. Clinically significant sleep disorders were defined as chronic insomnia using the Pittsburgh Sleep Symptom Questionnaire–Insomnia with duration criterion ≥ 3 months; OSA as apnea-hypopnea index ≥ 5 events/h with excessive sleepiness (Epworth Sleepiness Scale ≥ 11) or apnea-hypopnea index ≥ 15 events/h (even in the absence of symptoms); restless legs syndrome when participants endorsed the International Restless Legs Syndrome Study Group diagnostic criteria (2003) with symptoms ≥ 5 times/month involving moderate–severe distress. RESULTS: At least 1 sleep-related assessment was completed by 1,005 (female = 586, 58.3%) middle-aged (45–65 years) participants, 72.5% of eligible Raine Study parents. The respective prevalences for clinically significant disease in females and males were as follows: OSA, 24.0% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 20.5–27.7) and 47.3% (95% CI: 42.2–53.4); insomnia, 15.8% (95% CI: 13.1–19.0) and 9.3% (95% CI: 6.8–12.4); restless legs syndrome, 3.7% (95% CI: 2.4–5.4) and 2.2% (95% CI: 1.1–3.9). At least 1 sleep disorder was present in 42.9% of those with complete data on all assessments (n = 895). CONCLUSIONS: Common sleep disorders are highly prevalent, to a clinically important extent, in an Australian community sample of middle-aged adults. Contemporary OSA prevalence is notably higher than previously reported and further work is needed to determine the communal impact of OSA. CITATION: McArdle N, Reynolds AC, Hillman D, et al. Prevalence of common sleep disorders in a middle-aged community sample. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022;18(6):1503–1514.

Obesity is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. However, a substantial proportion of patients with these conditions have a seemingly normal body mass index (BMI). Conversely, not all obese individuals present with metabolic disorders giving rise to the concept of “metabolically healthy obese”. Using comprehensive lipidomic datasets from two large independent population cohorts in Australia (n = 14,831), we developed models that predicted BMI and calculated a metabolic BMI score (mBMI) as a measure of metabolic dysregulation associated with obesity. We postulated that the mBMI score would be an independent metric for defining obesity and help identify a hidden risk for metabolic disorders regardless of the measured BMI. Based on the difference between mBMI and BMI (mBMI delta; “mBMIΔ”), we identified individuals with a similar BMI but differing in their metabolic health profiles. Participants in the top quintile of mBMIΔ (Q5) were more than four times more likely to be newly diagnosed with T2DM (OR = 4.5; 95% CI = 3.1–6.6), more than two times more likely to develop T2DM over a five year follow up period (OR = 2.5; CI = 1.5–4.1) and had higher odds of cardiovascular disease (heart attack or stroke) (OR = 2.1; 95% CI = 1.5–3.1) relative to those in the bottom quintile (Q1). Exercise and diet were associated with mBMIΔ suggesting the ability to modify mBMI with lifestyle intervention. In conclusion, our findings show that, the mBMI score captures information on metabolic dysregulation that is independent of the measured BMI and so provides an opportunity to assess metabolic health to identify individuals at risk for targeted intervention and monitoring.

In the first half of the eleventh century, a close-knit group of scholars in southwest India did something new. They began composing texts about practical topics in a register of language they called “New Kannada.” Using this new register they compiled recipes, solved bureaucratic mathematical problems, predicted the weather, and waxed poetic about caring for animals and locating underground water. This dissertation explicates this turn to vernacular sciences and its epistemic consequences in South Asia. New vernacular sciences represented a tectonic shift in the systematics of knowledge in South Asia, but transregional languages did not disappear. Scholars writing in vernacular languages were implicated in larger networks of transregional scholars. In this mixed intellectual environment, authors writing in Sanskrit and Kannada disputed and redefined the meaning of scholarship, debating the value of erudition and experience. This dissertation follows a series of controversies carried out in Sanskrit and vernacular languages in precolonial South Asia. By focusing on controversies, the dissertation tells a “big-enough” history of science that neither culminates in a story of a civilization nor remains limited to case studies. Chapter one opens the dissertation by posing the question: What did it mean to be a scholar? It follows the career of Bilhaṇa, an itinerate Kashmiri intellectual who travelled across the subcontinent and eventually found steady employment in the court of the Western Cāḷukyas in southwest India. Working outwards from this single individual, the chapter charts changing norms of authorship that came along with new models of court funding and changing rules for scholastic dispute. Chapter two asks the question: Who was an authority? The chapter focuses on disputes over medicine and the value of the medical classics broached in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa court. Chapter three asks the two related questions: What was the value of the everyday? And what was the importance of vision in medieval India? It focuses on two Jain scholars named Vādirāja and Prabhācandra, who worked on related epistemological projects in the Western Cāḷukya and Paramāra courts. Chapter for follows how these philosophers investigated the distinction between nature and convention by contesting the reality of caste. Chapter five turns to scholars writing in the Western Cāḷukya court, who composed scholarly texts in vernacular languages. It asks the question: What were the languages of scholarship? The chapter describes the writings of a group of scholars who authored manuals on astrology, medicine, toxicology, mathematics, politics, and erotics. The chapter argues that these scholars invoked both erudition and experience as they composed texts they called “worldly sciences” that were “useful to the people of the world.” Chapter six asks the question: What was local knowledge? The chapter argues that authors writing in Sanskrit and Kannada developed a new set of agricultural sciences around weather prediction, reservoir and well construction, and horticulture. Chapter seven concludes the dissertation by showing how these medieval sciences were put to new uses in the early modern period. It tells a history of scholarly practices of information management on the eve of colonialism.

Rajan Gurukkal, History and Theory of Knowledge Production: An Introductory Outline. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019, 308 pp.

In the first half of the eleventh century, a group of scholars in southwest India did something new. They began composing systematic texts about everyday life in a register of language sometimes called New Kannada. While looking back toward earlier texts composed in Sanskrit – and even translating portions of them – these scholars centered their poetic ability and their personal experiences as opposed to prior authoritative texts. They described themselves as authoring “worldly sciences” that were “useful to the people of the world,” and they provided extensive reflections on the systematics of knowledge. Epistemic, linguistic, and political concerns were significantly renegotiated in this moment as local context was turned into a virtue for the production of technical treatises. This article uses this moment to interrogate recent discussions of useful knowledge and vernacular science. Usefulness can mean different things at different times and vernacular sciences change according to their language. This article argues for a usage of both terms that is more attuned to historical particulars. A history of useful knowledge from a place that now appears under the double effacement of the non-modern and non-West offers an opportunity to think through central concepts of the history of science without relying on economic or utilitarian discourses. This paper presents one possible example of what a more global history of useful knowledge might look like.

Epidemiologic studies have reported inconsistent results regarding an association between Parkinson disease (PD) and cutaneous melanoma (melanoma). Identifying shared genetic architecture between these diseases can support epidemiologic findings and identify common risk genes and biological pathways. Here we apply polygenic, linkage disequilibrium-informed methods to the largest available case-control, genome-wide association study summary statistic data for melanoma and PD. We identify positive and significant genetic correlation (correlation: 0.17, 95% CI 0.10 to 0.24; P = 4.09 × 10(−06)) between melanoma and PD. We further demonstrate melanoma and PD-inferred gene expression to overlap across tissues (correlation: 0.14, 95% CI 0.06 to 0.22; P = 7.87 × 10(−04)), and highlight seven genes including PIEZO1, TRAPPC2L, and SOX6 as potential mediators of the genetic correlation between melanoma and PD. These findings demonstrate specific, shared genetic architecture between PD and melanoma that manifests at the level of gene expression.