Sleep Habits and Insomnia-associated Factors in the Urban Elderly: Demographic, Health and Psychobehavioral Correlates / 신경정신의학

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to analyze sleep habit and investigate the association between insomnia and demographic, health and psycho-behavioral symptomatology in Korean urban elderly. METHOD: A total of 723 community residents aged 65 years or older were surveyed by two stage, random cluster sampling method. The response rate was 76.2%. Interviewers performed door to door visits and administered a questionnaire about sleep, past medical history, and several scales as the Psychogeriatric Assessment Scale (PAS), the short form Quality of Life Scale (SF-36) and etc. RESULTS: The mean scores are as follows: retiring time was ten-sixteen p.m., wake-up time was five twenty two a.m., duration of sleep was seven hours and six minutes. Among the elderly, 11.6% and 14.8% of the subjects reported chronic and intermittent difficulty in sleeping, respectively. The patients with back pain and history of stroke complained of more insomnia symptoms in univariate analysis. In ANCOVA analysis, insomnia symptoms were associated with an old age, depressive symptoms in male. Bodily pain and history of dermatologic disease were additional risk factors in female. CONCLUSIONS: The data suggest insomnia is one of most common health problems among elderly Koreans living in the community. Strong positive relationship between depressive symptoms and insomnia were found. Further research is needed to explore the causal relationship between insomnia and risk factors.

CAG Repeat Expansions in the Patients with Mood Disorder / 신경정신의학

OBJECTIVES: The genetic facotrs have been suggested for the etiology of mood disorders but the mode of inheritance is complex. Increased severity and an earlier onset of the bipolar and major depressive disorder over generations within families(Anticipation) were reported. In order to test the hypothesis that trinucleotide repeat expansions underlie the genetic basis of Bipolar and major depressive disorders, we have analyzed the extent of CAG reapeats in genomic DNA from mood disorder patients. METHODS: 55 bipolar disorder, 67 major depressive disorder patients were recruited according to the DSM-III-R criteria. 89 normal controls were recruited from the medical personnel, students and the visitors to the health services center who had no history of psychiatric illness and show normal profile of MMPI. The genomic DNA of patients and controls was analyzed by use of the(CTG) 17 oligonucleotide and the repeat expansion detection(RED) method. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the distribution of the number of CAG repeats among the groups. RESULTS: when the bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder patients were compared with the control group, no significant differences were observed. CONCLUSION: Our results do not support the hypothesis that expanding CAG repeats are causing the observed genetic anticipation in bipolar disorders and major depressive disorders.