The sorcerous demons of Iranian mythology known as Divs are likewise associated with the ability to afflict their victims with nightmares. Signs and symptoms
Those with nightmares experience abnormal sleep architecture. The impact of having a nightmare during the night has been found to be very similar to that of insomnia. This is thought to be caused by frequent nocturnal awakenings and fear of falling asleep. Nightmare disorder symptoms include repeated awakenings from the major sleep period or naps with detailed recall of extended and extremely frightening dreams, usually involving threats to survival, security, or self-esteem. The awakenings generally occur during the second half of the sleep period. Classification
According to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders-Third Edition (ICSD-3), the nightmare disorder, together with REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) and recurrent isolated sleep paralysis, form the REM-related parasomnias subcategory of the Parasomnias cluster. Nightmares may be idiopathic without any signs of psychopathology or associated with disorders like stress, anxiety, substance abuse, psychiatric illness or PTSD (>80% of PTSD patients report nightmares). As regarding the dream content of the dreams they are usually imprinting negative emotions like sadness, fear or rage. According to the clinical studies the content can include being chased, injury or death of others, falling, natural disasters or accidents. Typical dreams or recurrent dreams may also have some of these topics. Cause
Scientific research shows that nightmares may have many causes. In a study focusing on children, researchers were able to conclude that nightmares directly correlate with the stress in childrens lives.
Factor IX (or Christmas factor) (EC 3.4.21.22) is one of the serine proteases of the coagulation system; it belongs to peptidase family S1. Deficiency of this protein causes haemophilia B. It was discovered in 1952 after a young boy named Stephen Christmas was found to be lacking this exact factor, leading to haemophilia.Coagulation factor IX is on the World Health Organizations List of Essential Medicines. Physiology
Factor IX is produced as a zymogen, an inactive precursor. It is processed to remove the signal peptide, glycosylated and then cleaved by factor XIa (of the contact pathway) or factor VIIa (of the tissue factor pathway) to produce a two-chain form, where the chains are linked by a disulfide bridge. When activated into factor IXa, in the presence of Ca2+, membrane phospholipids, and a Factor VIII cofactor, it hydrolyses one arginine-isoleucine bond in factor X to form factor Xa. Factor IX is inhibited by antithrombin.Factor IX expression increases with age in humans and mice. In mouse models, mutations within the promoter region of factor IX have an age-dependent phenotype. Domain architecture
Factors VII, IX, and X all play key roles in blood coagulation and also share a common domain architecture. The factor IX protein is composed of four protein domains: the Gla domain, two tandem copies of the EGF domain and a C-terminal trypsin-like peptidase domain which carries out the catalytic cleavage. The N-terminal EGF domain has been shown to at least in part be responsible for binding tissue factor. Wilkinson et al.