(Medical Xpress)—Falling asleep in your bed at night and being "put to sleep" under general anesthesia – as well as waking up in the morning or coming out of anesthesia – aren't quite the same thing, yet they share some important similarities. Max Kelz, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, along with colleagues from Penn, UCSD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Thomas Jefferson University, explored the distinctions between anesthetic unconsciousness and sleep by manipulating the genetic pathways known to be involved in natural sleep and studying the resulting effects on anesthetic states. Their work is published in PLOS Genetics.
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