These early studies reflected a growing interest in the role sleep plays in many different illnesses and disease, to the extent that sleep studies have since become focus areas of the National Institute for Nursing Research. In the 1980 s, researchers in the School s sleep laboratory shifted focus to the study of sleep patterns in midlife women. An initial study by Giblin and nurse physiologist Joan Shaver looked at the relationship between sleep cycles and the hormonal fluctuations of menopause. Later research considered the broader implications of other Biobehavioral and ecological factors, such as the relationship between sleep loss and immune activity by investigators Carol Landis and Martha Lentz. Landis, Shaver and Lentz have also done pioneering research on multiple factors affecting sleep in women with fibromyalgia.
Today there is a growing cadre of investigators engaged in sleep research.
Studies on sleep and heart failure are being continued today by Dr. Terri Simpson and Dr. Sandra Motzer while Dr. Margaret Heitkemper and Dr. Monica Jarrett are examining sleep in women with irritable bowel syndrome. Dr. Margaret Dimond is examining sleep patterns in adults with dementia, and Dr. Patricia Prinz has a long history of research on sleep in healthy aging. The Sleep Research Laboratory is now one of the core biobehavioral laboratories affiliated with the Center for Women s Health Research in the School, and is also affiliated with the de Tornyay Center on Healthy Aging .