WHO technical meeting on sleep and health Bonn Germany, 22-24 January 2004 World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe European Centre for Environment and Health Bonn Office ABSTRACT Twenty-one world experts on sleep medicine and epidemiologists met to review the effects on health of disturbed sleep. Invited experts reviewed the state of the art in sleep parameters, sleep medicine and, long-term effects on health of disturbed sleep in order to define a position on the secondary and long- term effects of noise on sleep for adults, children and other risk groups. This report gives definitions of normal sleep, of indicators of disturbance (arousals, awakenings, sleep deficiency and fragmentation); it describes the main sleep pathologies and disorders and recommends that when evaluating the health impact of chronic long-term sleep disturbance caused by noise exposure, a useful model is the health impact of chronic insomnia. Keywords SLEEP ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH NOISE Address requests about publications of the WHO Regional Office to: • by e-mail
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