COVID-19 and sleep patterns in adolescents and young adults

ObjectiveIn March 2020, the world experienced a global pandemic, which involved the shutdown of schools or a transposition to remote teaching in most countries. The objective of the present study was to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic related lockdown on sleep patterns and sleep quality in adolescents and young adults.MethodsAn online survey was conducted in June 2020 with adolescents and young adults (n = 498) aged 12–25 years. Participants had to answer questions on sleep, first retrospectively, referring to the time prior to the pandemic, and then referring to the time during the pandemic.ResultsA pronounced shift towards later sleep combined with an increase in sleep duration was found during the pandemic. However, these changes in sleep habits were more pronounced in adolescents than in young adults and seem to occur mostly during weekdays compared to weekends. During the pandemic, teens also reported an improvement in daytime sleepiness and subjective sleep quality, while young adults reported an increase in sleep difficulties associated with sleep onset difficulties, nocturnal and early morning awakenings, and nightmares.ConclusionsThe COVID-19 related lockdown seems to have had a beneficial effect on sleep in adolescents. In young adults, benefits are not as obvious. These results support that later school start times would be beneficial for adolescents. However, in young adults it could be important to investigate the effects of other situational or interindividual factors (stress, lifestyle habits, employment, etc.).     

Severe odontogenic infections: focus on more effective early treatment

Our aim was to investigate delay in the treatment of patients with acute odontogenic infections. A prospective clinical study and a questionnaire survey were designed and implemented in the emergency maxillofacial surgical patients of Helsinki University Hospital, Finland, over a one-year period. Altogether 88 adult patients with odontogenic infections confirmed by hospital examination were included in the analysis. The outcome variable was admission to hospital. Two-thirds of the patients had had previous visits for health care for their current infection. Treatment was started in nearly half the patients before hospital admission, and half of the treatment provided was exclusively antibiotics. The focus of infection was detected in half the patients before admission. Patients who were required further hospitalisation were younger than who were discharged (p = 0.021). Less well-educated patients were more likely to be hospitalised than patients in other education groups (p = 0.033). Leucocytosis was more prevalent in patients with a mandibular focus (p = 0.008), non-identified focus (p = 0.010), and infection as a result of elective tooth extraction (p = 0.026). The number of previous health care visits for the acute infection was notably high. Early treatment of infection may be overlooked, particularly in younger age groups and less well-educated patients. Challenges in making the correct diagnosis and prescribing effective treatment for such infections cause additional health care visits and unnecessary delay in care. More attention should be paid to the early detection and comprehensive primary treatment of odontogenic infections.     

头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片的制备与质量评价

目的制备头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片,并考察其漂浮延迟时间及体外药物释放度。方法采用粉末直接压片工艺制备头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片,采用单因素实验方法筛选得到影响头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片体外漂浮延迟时间、漂浮时间和释放度的关键性辅料用量范围,最终以羟丙甲纤维素(HPMC K15M)用量、碳酸氢钠用量以及压片主压力作为考察因素,以头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片的漂浮延迟时间和1,4和8 h时间点的药物释放度作为评价指标,通过Box-Behnken实验设计优化得到头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片处方设计空间,并在设计空间任取一点连续制备3批头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片,评价其漂浮延迟时间及体外释放度。结果优化得到头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片的处方设计空间,每片HPMC K15M用量为260 mg,碳酸氢钠用量为60 mg,压片主压力为8 kN,制备的头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片漂浮延迟时间仅为12.1±0.5 min,在12 h内药物释放平缓,无药物突释。结论通过Box-Behnken实验设计优化得到的头孢氨苄胃漂浮缓释片处方,漂浮延迟时间较短,12 h维持漂浮状态,药物释放平稳。     

Improved delay‐partitioning approach to robust stability analysis for discrete‐time systems with time‐varying delays and randomly occurring parameter uncertainties

This paper is concerned with the robust stability problem for uncertain discrete‐time systems with interval time‐varying delays and randomly occurring parameter uncertainties. By construction of a suitable Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and utilization of new zero equalities with delay‐partitioning approach, improved delay‐dependent criteria for the robust stability of the systems are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities for guaranteeing the asymptotic stability of the concerned systems. The effectiveness and reduction of conservatism of the derived results are demonstrated by three numerical examples. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Will diminishing cochlear delay affect speech perception in noise?

Objective: Normal auditory systems appear well habituated to time/phase delays inherent to sound encoding along the hearing organ, sending frequency information non-simultaneously to the central auditory system. Eliminating, or simply perturbing, the cochlear delay might be expected to decrease speech recognition ability, especially under demanding listening conditions. Resources of a larger-scale investigation permitted a preliminary examination of this issue, particularly on a relevant timescale of empirically demonstrated cochlear delays. Design: In a randomized controlled trial study, word recognition was tested for mono-syllabic tokens treated digitally to exacerbate, if not diminish/nullify, such delays. Speech-weighted noise was used to interfere with listening to time-frequency reversed (nominally no delay) versus non-reversed (natural timing) transforms under three treatments of speech tokens: (1) original-digitally recorded; digitally processed to emphasize (2) transient versus (3) quasi-steady-state components. Study sample: Ten normal-hearing young-adult females. Results: The findings failed to demonstrate statistically significant differences between delay conditions for any of the three speech-token treatments. Conclusions: An algorithm putatively diminishing frequency-dependent cochlear delays failed to systematically deteriorate performance in all subjects for the fixed time-frequency transform, stimulus parameters, and test materials employed. Yet, trends were evident such that some effect of perturbing cochlear delays could not be ruled out completely.     

北京地区0-1岁儿童发育迟缓筛查现状研究

目的研究2011-2012年北京市0-1岁儿童发育迟缓社区筛查状况,为政府制定政策提供依据。方法北京市社区卫生服务中心采用丹佛发育筛查法（Denver developmental screening test,DDST）对辖区内0-1岁儿童进行发育迟缓筛查,并按工作常规要求网上直报2011、2012年儿童发育迟缓筛查数据。使用SPSS17.0进行统计分析。结果 2012年0-1岁儿童发育迟缓筛查率全市（户籍＋非户籍）为63.31%,户籍在册儿童筛查率为72.64%,非户籍为47.92%,与2011年全市49.95%（其中户籍57.43%,非户籍37.18%）相比,差异有统计学意义（P〈0.01）,筛查率明显提高。有4个区县全市筛查率超过85%,城区、近郊、远县地区全市筛查率2012年均高于2011年,城区已完成十二五指标,与远、近郊各区县差异有统计学意义（P〈0.01）。结论各区县筛查工作发展很不平衡,远、近郊各区县总体筛查水平较低,下步工作中应该继续加大发育筛查人员培训力度、加强发育筛查工作的管理力度并根据地区情况分类管理。