In a new longitudinal observational study, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) looked at the relationships among maternal snoring, childhood snoring and children’s metabolic characteristics—including body mass index (BMI) and insulin resistance, which reflects future risk for developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease—in approximately 1,100 children followed from gestation through early adolescence. Led by endocrinologist Christos S. Mantzoros, MD, DSc, the team demonstrates a bidirectional relationship between snoring and body weight in children. Their findings are published in the journal Metabolism.

“Excess body weight and child snoring were each predictive of the other among the children and adolescence in this cohort, creating a vicious metabolic cycle,” says Mantzoros, director of the Human Nutrition Unit in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at BIDMC, in a release. “Our findings confirm the existence of a physiologic loop between worsening obesity and worsening sleep apnea, which in turn leads to worsening obesity and higher risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease later in life.”

Mantzoros and colleagues examined the relationships among maternal snoring, child snoring, and child metabolic outcomes in humans.

New sleep research from Parks Associates reveals nearly 29 million US broadband households currently own a product that helps them track their sleep quality, representing less than half of the nearly 60 million consumers who report having at least one sleep problem. Sleep & IoT: Behaviors, Awareness, and Opportunities reveals 51% of US broadband households are interested in buying a sleep tech device.

“Sleep tracking features of smart watches and fitness trackers are raising consumer awareness about lack of sleep—42% of consumers in US broadband households are concerned their health will worsen due to poor sleep quality,” says Jennifer Kent, director, research quality and product development, Parks Associates, in a release. “Still, once a consumer understands their sleep patterns, then the issue becomes, what to do about it? Most consumers have not brought up these concerns with their doctors, but many state they would be willing to see a doctor if sleep tech detected a problem with their sleep patterns.”

Sleep & IoT: Behaviors, Awareness, and Opportunities report 58% of U.S. broadband households rated as valuable a sensor, device, or

Profusa, a company dedicated to the development of tissue-integrating biosensors for continuous monitoring of body chemistries, has raised more than $45 million in a Series C financing. New investors, VMS Investment Group, Tasly Pharmaceutical Group and Maxim Integrated Ventures, joined existing investors, 3E Bioventures Capital and Atinum Investment, in this latest round of funding. Profusa plans to use the proceeds from this financing to advance the commercialization of its first product on the market—the Profusa Lumee Oxygen Platform for continuous, real-time monitor­ing of tissue oxygen—and to accelerate the development of its transformative glucose biosensor technology.

“With this financing, we continue to build the financial strength necessary to advance our innovative biosensor platform,” says Ben Hwang, PhD, chairman and CEO of Profusa, in a release. “We appreciate the support and confidence of our new and existing investors. Together, we are working to realize our vision of revolutionizing the management and utilization of personalized healthcare data.”

Profusa’s first clinical offering, the Profusa Lumee Oxygen Platform, is CE Marked for use in the European Union. Lumee is designed to report tissue oxygen levels

Itamar Medical Ltd on Monday reported financial results for the second quarter of 2018.

“Itamar Medical continues to demonstrate double-digit growth and we are pleased that cardiologists increasingly recognize the value that testing for sleep apnea followed by effective therapy can provide to their patients,” says Gilad Glick, Itamar Medical president and CEO, in a release. “The growing recognition of the importance of sleep apnea testing, coupled with our transition to a diagnostics sales model that does not require hospitals to make capital investments, positions Itamar Medical as a market leader. We believe that our investment in technology such as SleePath and our focus on the cardiology market will allow us to continue capturing a growing share of the US home sleep test market.”

Revenues for the second quarter of 2018 were $6.1 million, an increase of 20%, compared to $5.1 million in the same quarter last year. The increase was primarily the result of a 21% increase in sales of WatchPAT, the company’s flagship product. WatchPAT revenue in the U.S. grew by 24% to a record $4.2 million in

EarlySense’s contact-free under-the-mattress monitoring system has been found to detect and alert for respiratory depression with high positive predictive value. This is according to a clinical poster presented at the 2018 American Thoracic Society (ATS) Conference.

The study highlights the use of EarlySense’s continuous monitoring platform to effectively monitor respiratory rate of patients on opioids.

“One of the key complications resulting from opioid use in hospitalized patients is respiratory distress that can lead to ICU [intensive care unit] transfers and sadly, even death. Moreover, respiratory depression is a key risk factor across the healthcare continuum, from hospitals to skilled nursing facilities,” says Michael Wong, JD, executive director of The Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS), in a release. “For this reason, all patients receiving opioids should be continuously electronically monitored, to help provide early detection of the risk of respiratory depression and enable timely intervention.”

The study analyzed 6,590 hospitalization days—more than 160,000 hours of monitoring via the EarlySense system—and detected 91 events of respiratory depression. The positive predictive value of 70% of events detected by the EarlySense system

A recently published study investigated whether home pulse oximetry monitoring might be a useful initial screening method of determining which children with Down syndrome—who are at high risk of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)—be recommended to undergo multichannel sleep studies to diagnose the condition. The study is published in Archives of Disease in Childhood. The home monitoring was conducted using Masimo SET Measure-through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry.

Noting that OSA “can only be reliably diagnosed using multichannel sleep studies, which are expensive, demanding for families and only available in specialist centres,” Catherine M. Hill, BM, MSc, PhD, MRCP, FRCPCH, ES, and colleagues at the University of Southampton and Southampton Children’s Hospital sought to determine whether home pulse oximetry monitoring could identify children at high risk of OSA, and in particular which parameters could most sensitively detect this risk, as an initial screening step. To that end, they studied 161 children with Down syndrome, aged 0.5 to 6 years, of whom 25 were separately diagnosed with OSA. The patients were monitored overnight using Masimo Radical-7 Pulse CO-Oximeters (pictured), with