Overview of a Sleep Monitoring Protocol for a Large Natural Population

A standard operating procedure for studying the sleep phenotypes in a large population cohort is proposed. It is intended for academic researchers in investigating the sleep phenotypes in conjunction with the clinical sleep disorders assessment guidelines. The protocol refers to the definitive American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) manual for setting polysomnography (PSG) technical specifications, scoring of sleep and associated events, etc. On this basis, it not only provides a standardized procedure of sleep interview, sleep-relevant questionnaires, and laboratory-based PSG test, but also offers a comprehensive process of sleep data analysis, phenotype extraction, and data storage. Both the objective sleep data recorded by PSG test and subjective sleep information obtained by the sleep interview and sleep questionnaires are involved in the data acquisition procedure. Subsequently, sleep phenotypes can be characterized by observable/inconspicuous physiological patterns during sleep from PSG test or can be marked by sleeping habits like sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, daytime dysfunction, etc., from sleep interview or questionnaires derived. In addition, solutions to the problems that may be encountered during the protocol are summarized and addressed. With the protocol, it can significantly improve scientific research efficiency and reduce unnecessary workload in large population cohort studies. Moreover, it is also expected to provide a valuable reference for researchers to conduct systematic sleep research.