Hypersomnia, Mental Health, Inequities Among the Highlighted Topics at SLEEP 2024

The Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC, will host their annual conference meeting in Houston, Texas, from June 1 to June 5, 2024. SLEEP 2024 will cover a variety of different subjects, including sleep in adolescents, sleep health inequities, and the influence of sleep on different mental health disorders.

The general sessions of the meeting start on June 2, with the majority of presentations held from Monday, June 3, to Wednesday, June 5. The plenary session and keynote address by Gina Poe, PhD, will open the general sessions part of the meeting on Monday morning. Then, abstract presentations and different sessions are open to attendees.

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Health inequities are a hot-button topic in medicine, and this is no different in sleep medicine. “Sleep Health Inequities: Sleep Deserts and Beyond” will open up the Wednesday schedule chaired by Hrayr Attarian, MD, and featuring other experts Ronald Gavidia Romero, MD; Lauren Robinson, MD; and Caroline Skolnik, MD. Topics such as inequities in sleep in the Middle Eastern population will be focused on during this session, along with other types of health inequities.

“I'm hoping that people will look beyond the everyday sleep clinical issues and think about how sleep impacts vulnerable populations, like hospital workers, prisoners, displaced people like refugees, as well as low-income families with chronic illnesses like chronic HIV infection,” Attarian, professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in an exclusive interview with AJMC.

Mental health will also be given focus during a symposium titled “Sleep, Circadian Rhythms, and Bipolar Disorder: From the Lab to the Clinic,” which will feature Jennifer Goldschmied, PhD; Helen Burgess, PhD; Lovemore Kunorozva, PhD; and Michael McCarty, MD, PhD, as they speak about the relationship between circadian rhythms and bipolar disorder. Mental health will also be featured in the Wednesday session, “Sleep’s Influence on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression Across Age Groups,” which will feature experts Joseph Dzierzewski, PhD; Kelly Kim; Ari Shechter, PhD; and Maya Schenker, PhD, talking about how different mental health disorders can affect sleep in all ages.

The diagnosis and management of narcolepsy and hypersomnia will feature in one of the first sessions of the day on Tuesday, June 4. “Advances in Narcolepsy and Idiopathic Hypersomnia Diagnosis and Management,” will feature experts Kiran Maski, MD, chair; Lucie Barateau, MD, PhD; Julie Flygare; and David Plante, MD, PhD, to discuss new areas of diagnosing and treating both sleep conditions. The session will run for 2 hours and will be held in the Grand Ballroom.

One of the first sessions of the meeting on Monday will be “Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in Sleep Medicine,” which features several doctors who will discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) and big data could play a part in the treatment of patients with sleep disorders. With different types of AI being introduced into everyday use, understanding how it can be used in medicine is of the utmost importance.

Late-breaking abstracts will also be presented on Monday, with poster sessions taking place throughout the 3 days of the conference. These posters and abstracts can provide breaking coverage of new and exciting clinical trials that can reinforce the usage of different treatments for sleep conditions and also introduce new ways to use previously known medications.

“Every year, when I go to [the] SLEEP [conference], it's always a very fruitful endeavor,” said Attarian. “Finding other colleagues, touching base with old ones…that's what I look forward to the most.”