Background: Stress, anxiety, and depression are some of the most important research and practice challenges for psychologists, psychiatrists, and behavioral scientists. Due to the importance of issue and the lack of general statistics on these disorders among the Hospital staff treating the COVID-19 patients, this study aims to systematically review and determine the prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression within front-line healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients. Methods: In this research work, the systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression approaches are used to approximate the prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression within front-line healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients. The keywords of prevalence, anxiety, stress, depression, psychopathy, mental illness, mental disorder, doctor, physician, nurse, hospital staff, 2019-nCoV, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 and Coronaviruses were used for searching the SID, MagIran, IranMedex, IranDoc, ScienceDirect, Embase, Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science (ISI) and Google Scholar databases. The search process was conducted in December 2019 to June 2020. In order to amalgamate and analyze the reported results within the collected studies, the random effects model is used. The heterogeneity of the studies is assessed using the I² index. Lastly, the data analysis is performed within the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software. Results: Of the 29 studies with a total sample size of 22,380, 21 papers have reported the prevalence of depression, 23 have reported the prevalence of anxiety, and 9 studies have reported the prevalence of stress. The prevalence of depression is 24.3% (18% CI 18.2–31.6%), the prevalence of anxiety is 25.8% (95% CI 20.5–31.9%), and the prevalence of stress is 45% (95% CI 24.3–67.5%) among the hospitals’ Hospital staff caring for the COVID-19 patients. According to the results of meta-regression analysis, with increasing the sample size, the prevalence of depression and anxiety decreased, and this was statistically significant (P < 0.05), however, the prevalence of stress increased with increasing the sample size, yet this was not statistically significant (P = 0.829). Conclusion: The results of this study clearly demonstrate that the prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression within front-line healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients is high. Therefore, the health policy-makers should take measures to control and prevent mental disorders in the Hospital staff.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are highly prevalent, chronic conditions with intriguing, yet poorly understood epidemiological overlap. To date, the amount of OSA syndrome present in patients with AD across literature remains unknown. To address this question, we collected all available published clinical data and analyzed them through a quantitative meta-analytical approach. The results of our quantitative meta-analysis suggest that the aggregate odds ratio for OSA in AD versus healthy control was 5.05 and homogeneous. This reflects that patients with AD have a five times higher chance of presenting with OSA than cognitively non-impaired individuals of similar age. Moreover, these data suggest that around half of patients with AD have experienced OSA at some point after their initial diagnosis. The additive impact of progressive changes in sleep quality and structure, changes in cerebral blood flow and the cellular redox status in OSA patients may all be contributing factors to cognitive decline and may further aggravate AD progression. It is hoped that the high OSA rate in AD patients, as suggested by the findings of our meta-analysis, might provide a sufficient clinical incentive to alert clinicians the importance of screening patients for OSA in AD, and stimulate further research in this area.

Background: In all epidemics, healthcare staff are at the centre of risks and damages caused by pathogens. Today, nurses and physicians are faced with unprecedented work pressures in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in several psychological disorders such as stress, anxiety and sleep disturbances. The aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence of sleep disturbances in hospital nurses and physicians facing the COVID-19 patients. Method: A systematic review and metanalysis was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA criteria. The PubMed, Scopus, Science direct, Web of science, CINHAL, Medline, and Google Scholar databases were searched with no lower time-limt and until 24 June 2020. The heterogeneity of the studies was measured using I² test and the publication bias was assessed by the Egger’s test at the significance level of 0.05. Results: The I² test was used to evaluate the heterogeneity of the selected studies, based on the results of I² test, the prevalence of sleep disturbances in nurses and physicians is I²: 97.4% and I²: 97.3% respectively. After following the systematic review processes, 7 cross-sectional studies were selected for meta-analysis. Six studies with the sample size of 3745 nurses were examined in and the prevalence of sleep disturbances was approximated to be 34.8% (95% CI: 24.8-46.4%). The prevalence of sleep disturbances in physicians was also measured in 5 studies with the sample size of 2123 physicians. According to the results, the prevalence of sleep disturbances in physicians caring for the COVID-19 patients was reported to be 41.6% (95% CI: 27.7-57%). Conclusion: Healthcare workers, as the front line of the fight against COVID-19, are more vulnerable to the harmful effects of this disease than other groups in society. Increasing workplace stress increases sleep disturbances in the medical staff, especially nurses and physicians. In other words, increased stress due to the exposure to COVID-19 increases the prevalence of sleep disturbances in nurses and physicians. Therefore, it is important for health policymakers to provide solutions and interventions to reduce the workplace stress and pressures on medical staff.

Functional neuroimaging techniques have accelerated progress in the study of sleep disorders. Considering the striking prevalence of these disorders in the general population, however, as well as their strong bidirectional relationship with major neuropsychiatric disorders, including major depressive disorder, their numbers are still surprisingly low. This review examines the contribution of resting state functional MRI to current understanding of two major sleep disorders, insomnia disorder and obstructive sleep apnoea. An attempt is made to learn from parallels of previous resting state functional neuroimaging findings in major depressive disorder. Moreover, shared connectivity biomarkers are suggested for each of the sleep disorders. Taken together, despite some inconsistencies, the synthesis of findings to date highlights the importance of the salience network in hyperarousal and affective symptoms in insomnia. Conversely, dysfunctional connectivity of the posterior default mode network appears to underlie cognitive and depressive symptoms of obstructive sleep apnoea.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common multisystem chronic disorder. Functional and structural neuroimaging has been widely applied in patients with OSA, but these studies have often yielded diverse results. The present quantitative meta-analysis aims to identify consistent patterns of abnormal activation and grey matter loss in OSA across studies. We used PubMed to retrieve task/resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry studies. Stereotactic data were extracted from fifteen studies, and subsequently tested for convergence using activation likelihood estimation. We found convergent evidence for structural atrophy and functional disturbances in the right basolateral amygdala/hippocampus and the right central insula. Functional characterization of these regions using the BrainMap database suggested associated dysfunction of emotional, sensory, and limbic processes. Assessment of task-based co-activation patterns furthermore indicated that the two regions obtained from the meta-analysis are part of a joint network comprising the anterior insula, posterior-medial frontal cortex and thalamus. Taken together, our findings highlight the role of right amygdala, hippocampus and insula in the abnormal emotional and sensory processing in OSA.