Recent advances in sleep research.

The past two decades have witnessed substantial progress in methodology and knowledge in sleep research all over the world. The paper at hand will present some recent local contributions to this field. The first is a European project (SIESTA) focusing on the creation of an automatic sleep classification system and a normative database, including polysomnographic (PSG) and psychometric measures, in order to make it possible to diagnose sleep-disordered patients as compared with and age- and sex-matched healthy controls between 20 and 95 years of age. Subsequently, two trials on nonorganic sleep disorders in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and bruxism, as well as two trials on organic sleep disorders, i.e. snoring/sleep-disordered breathing treated with a mandibular advancement device (I.S.T.) and restless legs syndrome treated with ropinirole and gabapentin, will be discussed.