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. 2021 May 1;17(5):1133-1139.
doi: 10.5664/jcsm.9152.

Past, present, and future of sleep medicine research in Latin America

Marisa Pedemonte  1 , Pablo E Brockmann  2 , Lourdes M DelRosso  3 , Monica L Andersen  4
Affiliations

Past, present, and future of sleep medicine research in Latin America

Marisa Pedemonte et al. J Clin Sleep Med. .

Abstract

Sleep medicine is a relatively young field with exponential growth in development and research in the last decades. Parallel to the advances in the United States, Latin America also had its beginnings in sleep medicine housed in neuroscience laboratories. Since the very first Latin American meeting in 1985, and the first sleep society in 1993, sleep research has undergone significant development in subsequent years. From contributions in animal research that allowed understanding of the activity of the brain during sleep to the studies that improved our knowledge of sleep disorders in humans, Latin America has become a scientific hub for expansion of sleep research. In this article, we present a historical account of the development of sleep medicine in Latin America, the current state of education and the achievements in research throughout history, and the latest advances in the trending areas of sleep science and medicine. These findings were presented during World Sleep Society meeting in Vancouver in 2019 and complement the work on sleep societies and training published by Vizcarra-Escobar et al in their article "Sleep societies and sleep training programs in Latin America" (J Clin Sleep Med. 2020;16(6):983-988).

Keywords: Latin America research; future research perspectives; recent advances; sleep.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors have seen and approved the manuscript. Dr. Andersen was supported by grants from the Associação Fundo de Incentivo à Pesquisa (AFIP). P.E.B. was supported by FONDECYT N° 1180397. M.L.A. received CNPq fellowships. The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Countries with the highest number of publications per million inhabitants in the field of sleep in Latin America.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Number of publications in the topic of sleep in the past 10 years, considering the 10 most prolific countries in Latin America.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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