Brian J. Murray, MD: Establishing Normal Values in Polysomnography

“One advantage of this normative data is that researchers can now plan appropriate sample size calculations. We have a better sense of what ‘normal’ is in our population and what the ranges are, so it will help studies to be designed more efficiently.”

One of the challenges in conducting sleep studies is that for quite some time, normative polysomnographic sleep data for adult patients has been limited—with the majority of them conducted with only a few hundred subjects at most.

As this need for normative control values can be costly and ultimately constraining to sleep research, Brian J. Murray, MD, head, neurology, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, and colleagues sought to establish normative values based on control values obtained from many smaller studies. To do so, 169 studies including 5273 patients were included in the analysis, which Murray said could be used as a tool for future research in “virtually any sleep-related question.”

The data, which revealed a number of interesting points, were presented at the 2019 American Academy of Neurology (AAN) Annual Meeting, May 4-10, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. To find out more about the results of the assessment and what the value of these data are to the clinical community, NeurologyLive sat with Murray to discuss the work. He shared his insights into the findings as well as how this may impact future work in sleep.

For more coverage of AAN 2019, click here.

REFERENCES

Murray BJ, Kendzerska T, Jairam T, et al. Establishing true polysomnographic normative values: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Presented at: 2019 American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting. May 4-10, 2019; Philadelphia, PA.