OBM Geriatrics

(ISSN 2638-1311)

OBM Geriatrics is an Open Access journal published quarterly online by LIDSEN Publishing Inc. The journal takes the premise that innovative approaches – including gene therapy, cell therapy, and epigenetic modulation – will result in clinical interventions that alter the fundamental pathology and the clinical course of age-related human diseases. We will give strong preference to papers that emphasize an alteration (or a potential alteration) in the fundamental disease course of Alzheimer’s disease, vascular aging diseases, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, skin aging, immune senescence, and other age-related diseases.

Geriatric medicine is now entering a unique point in history, where the focus will no longer be on palliative, ameliorative, or social aspects of care for age-related disease, but will be capable of stopping, preventing, and reversing major disease constellations that have heretofore been entirely resistant to interventions based on “small molecular” pharmacological approaches. With the changing emphasis from genetic to epigenetic understandings of pathology (including telomere biology), with the use of gene delivery systems (including viral delivery systems), and with the use of cell-based therapies (including stem cell therapies), a fatalistic view of age-related disease is no longer a reasonable clinical default nor an appropriate clinical research paradigm.

Precedence will be given to papers describing fundamental interventions, including interventions that affect cell senescence, patterns of gene expression, telomere biology, stem cell biology, and other innovative, 21st century interventions, especially if the focus is on clinical applications, ongoing clinical trials, or animal trials preparatory to phase 1 human clinical trials.

Papers must be clear and concise, but detailed data is strongly encouraged. The journal publishes research articles, reviews, communications and technical notes. There is no restriction on the length of the papers and we encourage scientists to publish their results in as much detail as possible.

Indexing: 
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Archiving: full-text archived in CLOCKSS.

Rapid publication: manuscripts are undertaken in 12 days from acceptance to publication (median values for papers published in this journal in 2021, 1-2 days of FREE language polishing time is also included in this period). 

Current Issue: 2023  Archive: 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017

Special Issue

Sleep Disorders in Older People

Submission Deadline: September 15, 2020 (Open) Submit Now

Guest Editor

Roy G. Beran, MD

Conjoint Professor, Department of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia;
Professor, School of Medicine, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia;
Professor, Chair, Medical Law, Sechenov Moscow First State University, Moscow, Russia

Website | E-Mail

Research Interests: Sleep; health law & ethics; epilepsy; sleep disorders; drug trials; legal medicine; neurological conditions & new therapies; neurological advances

About This Topic

"Sleep Disorders in the Elderly" is a broad ranging topic that largely encompasses all of geriatric medicine as well as the neurology of the elderly. Those dealing with older patients are usually either geriatricians or neurologists, rather than sleep physicians. Almost no geriatricians and very few neurologists are cross-accredited with appropriate training in sleep medicine. As a consequence, this relegates consideration of sleep-related disorders to the periphery of patient evaluation, despite such conditions as obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) having the potential to result in significant increase in stroke, myocardial infarction and dementia. Restless legs and Periodic Limb Movements In Sleep (PLMS), often with arousal (PLMA), respond to anti-Parkinsonian agents, such as dopamine agonists, such as Pramipexole, raising consideration that dopamine agonists have a therapeutic role in a number of sleep disorders.

As people age, so there is a comparable increase in sleep related disorders, such as OSA. With age often comes increased affluence, obesity and related issues of which OSA is just one of many. Degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's Disease (PD), also increase in prevalence with advancing age. PD is associated with a number of sleep-related problems, including REM Behaviour Disorder (RBD) as well as OSA.

With the growing appreciation of the ubiquitous impact of sleep-related problems, particularly amongst the elderly, it has been appreciated that there is an unmet need to provide an educative resource to help those involved in the management of the elderly to enhance better management of their sleep disorders.

Because of the impact of Continuous Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) OSA, in many countries, such as Australia, has been usurped by respiratory physicians to the point that the Australian Health Practitioner Registration Agency/Authority does not cross-accredit either geriatricians or neurologists as sleep physicians and only categorises sleep medicine within the rubric of respiratory and sleep medicine, ignoring the fact that OSA was first diagnosed by neurologists when investigating patients thought to have epilepsy with all night video telemetric electroencephalography. It follows that there are a number of biases involved in the management and recognition of sleep medicine, which has greater relevance in the elderly, and it is envisaged that this focused issue of the Journal will address at least some of those unmet needs.

Publication

Open Access Case Report

Sleep Disorders in Older People with Special Focus on Parkinson’s Disease

Received: 01 July 2022;  Published: 13 September 2022;  doi: 10.21926/obm.geriatr.2203204

Abstract

This paper examines sleep disorders in older people, focusing on Parkinson’s disease (PD). It defines PD and explores those conditions associated with sleep disorders and their relationship to PD. It identifies specific conditions which cause sleep disoders in patients with PD, namely: REM sleep behaviour disorder (RDB) which [...]
Open Access Research Article

Parkinson’s Disease Motor and Non-Motor Features Accompanying Insomnia and Excessive Daytime Sleepiness Symptoms, a Large Population-Based Study

Received: 30 June 2020;  Published: 26 August 2020;  doi: 10.21926/obm.geriatr.2003131

Abstract

Insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness are the most common sleep disturbances in Parkinson’s disease. This study aims at better understanding how severity of PD motor and non-motor features and dopaminergic treatments contribute to these sleep symptoms in the first decade of PD. Data from a community-based cohort of PD patients was used [...]
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