TUESDAY, Nov. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Poor police training, a lack of educational materials, and meager data collection are hindering efforts to increase awareness about the dangers of drowsy driving in the United States and aggressively tackle the problem, a new report finds.

The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) released its findings Tuesday as part of Drowsy Driving Prevention Week, Nov. 10-16.

"States across the nation seem to be trying to increase their efforts to combat drowsy driving, especially in the area of graduated licensing laws for young drivers," CEO David Cloud said in a sleep foundation news release. "However, due to a lack of awareness of the serious repercussions of drowsy driving and a lack of accurate reporting, state officials don't have the data they need to support increased efforts to aggressively address driver fatigue. Drivers, parents, educators, employers and government officials alike need to start taking drowsy driving more seriously."

In its State of the States Report on Drowsy Driving, the NSF rated all states and the District of Columbia based on responses to a series of questions about law enforcement, police training, data collection, educational programs, and graduated licensing laws for new drivers. Overall, Mississippi received the highest grade (B-), while most states received a "C."

Among the findings:

• Only 13 states and the District of Columbia provide police training about the effects of fatigue on driving performance, while five other states provide limited or sporadic training on the issue.
• Only one state, New Jersey, has a specific law for fatal crashes caused by drivers who fall asleep. However, all but two states (Iowa and Maine) said they have existing laws that enable them to charge a drowsy driver who causes a fatal crash.
• Only 17 states require drowsy driving information to be included in driver education programs.
• Information about drowsy driving is included in 43 states' driver's license manuals, but several states perpetuate myths about unproven drowsy driving countermeasures such as rolling down the window or turning up the radio volume.
• Most states (45) and the District of Columbia have graduated licensing systems for young people that include a nighttime driving restriction. Seven states have nighttime driving restrictions starting at 10 p.m., as recommended by NSF and a number of traffic safety organizations.
• There are at least nine states with 16 pending bills that target drowsy driving in various ways.

While some states are taking action to get drowsy drivers off the road, many Americans still don't understand the serious impact sleepiness has on driving performance, the NSF said. In fact, the foundation's 2008 Sleep in America Poll found that almost a third of working Americans reported driving drowsy at least once in the previous month.

The NSF's annual Drowsy Driving Prevention Week is designed to boost public awareness and increase advocacy around the issue. This year's campaign focuses on special at-risk groups such as young drivers, working adults, commercial drivers and people with untreated sleep disorders. The NSF is a national, nonprofit organization.

More information

Here's where you can find out more about Drowsy Driving Prevention Week  .

MONDAY, Nov. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Prolonged exposure to high temperatures degrades the antifungal properties of the ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution, which was implicated in a U.S. eye infection outbreak between 2004 and 2006, a new study says.

ReNu with MoistureLoc contains a microbial agent not found in other contact lens solutions. Between August 2004 and March 2006, there were 154 confirmed cases of the eye infection Fusarium keratitis among users of ReNu with MoistureLoc, made by Bausch & Lomb, the study authors said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cited the company for inadequate temperature control in the production, storage and transport of ReNu with MoistureLoc produced at Bausch & Lomb's Greenville, S.C., plant.

In the new study, Dr. John D. Bullock, of the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio, and colleagues conducted tests on ReNu with MoistureLoc and five other contact lens solutions.

"Two bottles of each solution were separately stored at room temperature and 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) for four weeks, serially diluted and then tested for their ability to inhibit growth of 11 Fusariam isolates [seven of which were associated with the keratitis epidemic]," the researchers wrote.

Compared to the other solutions, ReNu with MoistureLoc showed the greatest decline in antifungal activity when stored at 60 degrees C. Clear Care and ReNu MultiPlus performed the best, the researchers said.

When the researchers focused on the strains of Fusariam associated with the keratitis outbreak, ReNu with MoistureLoc allowed fungal growth in 27 of 84 combinations when stored at room temperature and in 67 of 84 combinations when stored at 60 degrees C.

The study was published in the November issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.

"The precise temperature, duration of exposure to elevated temperature and extent of temperature fluctuation that may diminish the antimicrobial activity of a particular contact lens solution is not known, and thus, additional studies may be warranted. However, our findings, coupled with the FDA reports of Bausch & Lomb's failure to regulate the storage and transport temperatures of the products manufactured in their Greensville plant, may be significant," the study authors concluded.

"Knowledge of the potential loss of antimicrobial activity of contact lens solutions and other pharmaceutical products when exposed to higher temperatures and the risk of such exposure when storing and transporting those products may help prevent such epidemics in the future," the researchers added.

More information

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has more about contact lenses and eye infections.

FRIDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Dialysis for eight hours a night, three times a week, reduced the risk of death for kidney patients by nearly 80 percent, compared to conventional, four-hour dialysis three times a week, a new study found.

This type of improvement is important and necessary, the study's lead author said. "Unfortunately, the mortality rate of patients treated by conventional four hours, three times weekly hemodialysis remains unacceptably high, despite several improvements in dialysis technology and general medical care," said Dr. Ercan Ok, who's with the department of nephrology at Ege University, in Izmir, Turkey.

"As an alternative, more frequent and/or longer hemodialysis regimens seem promising," added Ok, who presented the findings Nov. 7 at the American Society of Nephrology's annual meeting, in Philadelphia.

Dialysis, sometimes called hemodialysis, can be performed as either an inpatient or outpatient procedure, although it's usually administered at a medical facility of some kind. The treatment, which extracts waste products from the blood, such as potassium and urea, is the most common means of fluid removal intervention for kidney-failure patients.

Most patients who undergo dialysis do so on a thrice weekly schedule for between three to five hours per treatment, according to the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

For the new study, Ok and his colleagues tracked 224 Turkish dialysis patients -- average age, 45 -- who were switched from conventional dialysis to a routine of three nights a week, eight hours per session at a dialysis center. The researchers noted that the patients generally experienced a month-long "adaptation period," after which they were able to sleep during their treatments.

After one year, the researchers compared the overnight group with a similar pool of patients who maintained the typical regimen of four hours of treatment, three days a week.

The overnight patients experienced a 78 percent drop in mortality compared with standard patients. Also, overnight patients experienced marked improvements in blood pressure control, which translated into a two-thirds drop in the use of blood pressure medications.

And, levels of the mineral phosphate declined toward normal levels among the overnight dialysis patients, which led to a 72 percent decline in the use of drugs to lower phosphate absorption.

The overnight patients also reported increased appetite, desirable weight gain, and a boost in blood protein levels.

What's more, many of the overnight patients returned to work, reported improved job performance and had better mental functioning.

"We expect that these data would be convincing to the whole society -- including physicians, patients, health authorities, and social security institutions -- for the necessity of longer hemodialysis in order to improve high mortality and morbidity," Ok said.

Dr. Robert Provenzano, chairman of the department of nephrology at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit, said that while the study "has merit, it needs to be validated."

"What we do know for a fact is that more dialysis is better. That should be intuitive, since your kidneys work seven days a week, 24 hours a day," he said. "And data from Europe and even the U.S. looking at more frequent dialysis has already shown improvements across the board: in cardiovascular status, anemia, blood pressure, a better sense of well-being, and less hospitalization."

"But the problem here is that in this study, the patients were self-selected," Provenzano added. "So it's not a randomized, controlled study. Which might mean that the findings may be almost too good to believe. Since in developing countries, such as Turkey, China, India, patients who receive this kind of procedure, which all-comers receive in the U.S., tend to be wealthier and healthier. And we don't know how that fact would impact on these results. So what we need now is more randomized research."

More information

For more on kidney failure and dialysis, visit the U.S. National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse.

FRIDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) -- When anticipating pain, the brains of people with depression kick into overdrive and hinder their ability to handle hurt, a new study shows.

The November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry reports brain imaging also reveals that during the painful experience, activity then decreases in other areas, including those regions that handle pain modulation.

"The anticipatory brain response may indicate hypervigilance to impending threat, which may lead to increased helplessness and maladaptative modulation during the experience of heat pain," the authors wrote. "This mechanism could in part explain the high comorbidity of pain and depression when these conditions become chronic."

Chronic pain and depression often overlap, the authors wrote. More than 75 percent of depression patients have recurring or chronic pain, while between 30 percent and 60 percent of chronic pain patients also report symptoms of depression.

"Understanding the neurobiological basis of this relationship is important, because the presence of comorbid pain contributes significantly to poorer outcomes and increased cost of treatment in major depressive disorder," they wrote.

The research team, from the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, studied 30 adults, half with a major depressive disorder but not on medication for the condition and half without it. All wore devices that could heat their arms to painful levels, and all were given visual signals before the exercise as to whether they would feel painful heat or a more mild warmth.

The patients with depression also completed a questionnaire about their tendencies to magnify, ruminate over or feel helpless in the face of pain.

Compared with the controls, patients with depression showed increased activation in certain areas of their brain, including the right amygdala -- a brain region tied to emotional responses. This increased activity also correlated to higher helplessness scores on the questionnaires of the patients with depression.

"Future studies that directly examine whether maladaptive response to pain in major depressive disorder is due to emotional allodynia [a pain response to a non-painful stimulus], maladaptive control responses, lack of resilience and/or ineffectual recruitment of positive energy resources will further our understanding of pain-depression comorbidity," the authors concluded.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Health has more about depression.