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Bridget M. Kuehn

JAMA. 2006;296:2427-2428.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Chicago—Two persistent medical mysteries, the mechanisms of sleep and anesthesia, are converging in research that may help unravel the secrets of these phenomena and may one day lead to improved techniques for anesthesia and for treating sleep deprivation.

Although there are important differences between sleep and anesthesia—for example, a sleeping person is easily awakened by painful stimuli—some scientists are focusing on the overlap between the two. Their findings are providing insights that may one day allow physicians to better tailor anesthesia to individual patients, improve anesthesia safety, and provide better treatments for sleep problems.

Research exploring the overlapping mechanisms of sleep and anesthesia may lead to better treatments for sleep problems and to safer sedation that is tailored to the patient.

A GENETIC CLUE

A single gene mutation in drosophila known to regulate how much the insects need to sleep also determines how much anesthetic is required to sedate . . . [Full Text of this Article]