Objective There is a need for brief, psychometrically sound instruments to assess adolescent sleep, particularly for ethnic-minority and economically disadvantage adolescents. A 10-item short version of the Adolescent Sleep Wake Scale was recently proposed based upon exploratory factor analysis with primarily Caucasian healthy adolescents from middle to high-income families. The aim of the current study was to expand the utility of the short version of the Adolescent Sleep Wake Scale by investigating the empirical and construct validity of the measure on an ethnically diverse sample of adolescents from an economically disadvantaged community. Material and Methods Participants included 467 adolescents (40% African American, 35.5% Caucasian, 16.5% Latino, and 7.9% Multi-Ethnic), aged 12 to 18 years (mean = 15.27 years, SD = 1.96 years), who completed the Adolescent Sleep Wake Scale. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted with Mplus 7 based on the 3-factor solution proposed by Essner et al (2014). Results CFA indicated that the three-factor structure was a good fit for the data (χ2 (29)=52.053, p=.005, RMSEA=0.04, CFI=0.98, TLI=.96, SRMR=0.03), and factor loadings for each item were >.40. Cronbach alphas by ethnicity indicated that the scale has acceptable reliability (.70 ≤ α ≤ .90) for African American, Caucasian, and multi-ethnic adolescents, but not for Latino adolescents. Conclusion Our results support the use of the Adolescent Sleep Wake Scale short form for most ethnic-minority and economically disadvantaged adolescents.

Objectives The current study utilized mHealth technologies that were objective (e.g., sleep actigraphy and pulse oximetry) and time-sensitive (e.g., ecological momentary assessments [EMAs]) to characterize sleep in youth with sickle cell disease (SCD) and investigate the relationships between sleep variables and pain. It also investigated the influence of age on sleep and the sleep–pain relationship. Methods Eighty-eight youth with SCD (aged 8–17 years) were recruited from three regional pediatric SCD clinics. Youth completed twice daily EMAs for up to 4 weeks to assess nighttime subjective sleep quality and daily pain. They also wore a sleep actigraph for 2 weeks to assess sleep duration, sleep efficiency, and sleep latency, and a wrist-worn pulse oximeter for two nights to assess whether they had sleep apnea. Multilevel models were calculated predicting daily SCD pain using the sleep variables, age, and the interaction between age and the sleep variables. Results None of the sleep variables were related to one another. Poor subjective sleep quality during the night was related to high pain severity the next day, and high pain was related to poor subjective sleep quality that night. Older age was associated with poorer subjective sleep quality, shorter duration of nighttime sleep, and high sleep latency. Also, findings indicated that as age increased, the strength of the relationship between poor continuous subjective sleep quality and high pain severity increased. Conclusions Future research is needed to examine possible mechanisms connecting subjective sleep quality to high pain.

Abstract:Background: The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of quercetin supplementation on neurocognitive functioning. Methods: A large community sample (n = 941) completed a 12-week supplementation protocol, and participants were randomly assigned to receive 500 mg/day or 1000 mg/day quercetin, or placebo. Results: Results failed to indicate significant effects of quercetin on memory, psychomotor speed, reaction time, attention, or cognitive flexibility, despite large increases in plasma quercetin levels among the quercetin treatment groups. Discussion: Consistent with recent research, this study raises concerns regarding the generalizability of positive findings of in vitro and animal quercetin research, and provides evidence that quercetin may not have an ergogenic effect on neurocognitive functioning in humans.

The aims of the current study were to investigate whether SCD incurs an additional risk for poor sleep over and above the influence of sociodemographic factors (ie, race and sex) during adolescence, and to explore the relationships between sociodemographic, physical (ie, age and pubertal status), and disease-related factors (ie, SCD genotype and hydroxyurea use) on sleep problem risk during adolescence. Black adolescents (age, 12 to 17 y) with SCD (n=53) were recruited from regional pediatric SCD clinics in the southeast and a sample of healthy black adolescents (n=160) were recruited from middle and high schools. Regression analyses indicated that SCD was uniquely related to sleeping more, and worse sleep quality over and above the influence of sociodemographic factors. Having a more severe SCD genotype was related to worse sleep quality and higher pubertal status was related to sleeping longer during the week. Results indicate the need for systematic assessments of sleep problems, with more a focus on youth with more severe genotypes and higher pubertal status. Future research should focus on characterizing trajectories of sleep problems in this population, identifying key risk factors, and elucidating mechanisms linking risk factors to sleep problem risk to aid in tailoring interventions for this population.