Sleep 2026 Annual Meeting Highlights Past and Future of Sleep Medicine

The Sleep 2026 Annual Meeting, which took place June 14-17, 2026, in Baltimore, Maryland, featured 3 days of presentations and expert panels that brought sleep medicine to the forefront. The conference included sessions on the history of REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) and sleep inequities in global sleep health.

Perspective on RBD Over 40 Years

The general sessions for the Sleep 2026 Annual Meeting began with a keynote address on a 40-year perspective on RBD, with the lecture primarily given by Carlos Schenck, MD, a psychiatrist at Hennepin Healthcare and the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center.

“RBD really brings together the activities of the Sleep Research Society and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine…so this is really the ultimate meeting to discuss RBD,” began Schenck. RBD, he said, is not on the fringe of sleep medicine but rather part of the core of sleep medicine.

The first paper that was published about RBD was published in 1986 in the Sleep journal, exactly 40 years before the Sleep 2026 Annual Meeting, where those who experienced RBD described it as having “violent moving nightmares.”¹ The researchers proposed that this was a new category of parasomnia. “RBD is a behavioral and experiential disorder. People do not have to act out their typical dreams; they act out very different dreams where they feel chased or attacked by people or animals,” Schenck explained. He also noted that there is current research looking into the link between RBD and posttraumatic stress disorder.

He continued that, initially when looking at patients with RBD, they had to determine that the behavior of those with RBD, where they would reenact their dreams in their own bed, was not external seizures but rather that it was part of REM sleep. This discovery, he credited to Mark Mahowald, PhD, and Andrea Patterson.

Studies on animals also were conducted and found similar results. Today, diagnostic criteria for RBD require that a patient have sleep-related vocalization or complex motor behaviors that are documented during a polysomnography test and occur during REM sleep.

Schenck emphasized that although there have been studies looking into the various factors that could go into RBD, there are still challenges in addressing the sleep disorder in patients. Challenges include identifying neuroprotection and disease-modifying therapies, the disclosure of neurodegeneration risk to patients younger than 50 years, the long-term implications of RBD associated with antidepressants, similarities and differences in RBD based on sex, and the need for innovative protocols for the detection of RBD in remote areas, including homes.

“There is something for almost everybody with RBD, and keep this in mind: How can you apply your research tools and join our research effort? Our field would welcome you very much,” Schenck concluded.

Sleep Challenges Persist Throughout the Globe

A separate panel held during the meeting focused on how sleep health was addressed in all areas of the world, including in the US. Mamatha Vodapally, MD, a third-year resident at Adventist Health Hanford, spoke on her research done at the University of California, San Francisco, Fresno. The goal of her study was to understand which social demographic, psychosocial, and structural determinants were associated with relationships in sleep.

“Short sleep has been linked to adverse outcomes [in] almost every specialty. In cardiology, it is associated with hypertension, coronary artery disease, and stroke. In endocrinology, it contributes to obesity and diabetes,” Vodapally explained.²

The researchers used Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data for the study to assess short sleep, specifically the 2022 dataset. Short sleep was defined as 6 hours or less per night and was the focus of the first analysis, whereas the second analysis examined geographic patterns in sleep duration.

“What we found was striking. About 1 in 3 US adults, 33.2%, reported sleeping 6 hours or less per night,” said Vodapally. “So that means short sleep is not a problem affecting a small group of people; it affects tens of millions of adults across the country.”

After examining demographic and psychosocial factors, the researchers found that people who felt that they lacked emotional support were more likely to report short sleep. Patients with lower income, lower educational attainment, and lower life satisfaction were also more likely to have shorter sleep. A higher likelihood of short sleep was found in American Indians, Alaska Natives, African Americans. Individuals with a high social collectiveness had a 32% lower likelihood of short sleep, whereas currently smoking increased the odds by nearly 70%. Vodapally noted that social connection and transportation access were potential modifiable risk factors.

Seasonality alone was not a major driver of sleep duration in the US. Shorter sleep duration was reported in those living in the northern US, whereas those living in the southern US reported longer sleep duration, totaling about 15 to 30 mins per night. Although the study had some limitations, including its cross-sectional design and the BRFSS only including a single sleep duration questionnaire, the results should still be taken as part of a collective of data.

“Ultimately, sleep should be viewed as both a clinical issue and a public health issue,” Vodapally concluded. “Improving sleep health will likely require addressing not only individual behaviors but also the social and structural factors that influence sleep.”

References

1. Schenck CH, Bundlie SR, Ettinger MG, Mahowald MW. Chronic behavioral disorders of human REM sleep: a new category of parasomnia. 1986 [classical article]. Sleep. 2002;25(2):293-308. doi:10.1093/sleep/9.2.293
2. Itani O, Jike M, Watanabe N, Kaneita Y. Short sleep duration and health outcomes: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression. Sleep Med. 2017;32:246-256. doi:10.1016/j.sleep.2016.08.006