Artículo original
Feasibility of Global Sleep Research in Rural Areas of Low-and-Middle-Income Countries. The Atahualpa Project Experience
Autor: Oscar H. Del Brutto, Pablo R. CastilloRev. Ecuat. Neurol. VOL 24 Nº 1-3, 2015
Changes in lifestyle, including sedentarism, shift work and increased visual contamination, have modified sleep patterns and increased the prevalence of sleep-related disorders in remote rural areas of many low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). However, there is scarce information on the public health impact of sleep-related disorders in these regions and publications lack consistency in their design and use of research tools, which creates barriers for proper comparison of results across populations. Moreover, in the largest studies on sleep-related disorders conducted in LMIC, individuals were interviewed with only one or two questions, which might not reflect the actual magnitude of the problem. In our opinion, the goal should not be to interview tens of thousands of individuals but to study them well by selecting representative populations of different regions to evaluate them thoughtfully and uniformly.