Rita Trammell, PhD
Department of Internal Medicine
Division of Rheumatology
Associate Professor

Inability to sleep, excessive sleepiness, and fatigue are common problems that many, if not all, people experience at some time in their lives. Excessive sleepiness and fatigue, particularly when persistent, reduce the quality of life of affected individuals and also cause significant economic loss in terms of diminished productivity and employment capability. Considerable data support strong interactions between the immune response and vigilance states. Furthermore, infectious diseases, cancer and/or their therapies are often associated with non-restorative sleep, excessive daytime sleepiness, and fatigue, and many individuals also suffer from chronic fatigue of unknown etiology. Identifying the mechanisms responsible for poor sleep, chronic fatigue and excessive sleepiness and developing effective interventions for these disabling symptoms is the focus of research in our laboratory.

1. Trammell RA, EJ. Moticka: Semiquantitative analysis of IL-2 and IFN mRNA in vivo in experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis, Regional Immunology 6(1&2):31-34, 1994
2. Trammell, R.; Johnson, C.; Barker, J.; Bell, R.; Allan, D.G.: MDR-1 Gene Expression Does Not Increase During Tumor Progression in the MGH-OGS Murine Osteosarcoma Tumor Model. Journal of Orthopaedic Research 18:449-455, 2000.
3. Chilvers M, Vejvoda H, Trammell R, et al.: Trochanteric fixation in total hip arthroplasty using the S-ROM bolt and washer. J Arthroplasty 17:740, 2002
4. Allan DG, Trammell R: The role of arthroscopy in the evaluation and management of the problematic total knee arthroplasty. Indian Journal of Orthopaedics 36:80, 2002
5. Trammell RA, Brooks M, Cox L, et al.Fatal hemorrhagic diathesis associated with mild factor IX deficiency in pl/J mice. Comp Med. 2006;56:426-434
6. Klingler L, Trammell R, Allan DG, Butler MG, Schwartz HS.Clonality studies in sacral chordoma. Cancer Genet.Cytogenet. 2006;171:68-71
7. Jhaveri KA, Ramkumar V, Trammell RA, Toth LA.Spontaneous, homeostatic, and inflammation-induced sleep in NF-kappaB p50 knockout mice. Am.J.Physiol Regul.Integr.Comp Physiol 2006;291:R1516-R1526
8. Allan DG, Trammell R, Dyrstad B, Barnhart B, and Milbrandt J. Serum Cobalt and Chromium Elevations Following Hip Resurfacing with the Cormet 2000 Device. Journal of Surgical Orthopaedic Advances. Vol 16(1):12-18, 2007
9. Jhaveri, K. A., Trammell, R. A., and Toth, L. A. Effect of environmental temperature on sleep, locomotor activity, core body temperature and immune responses of C57BL/6J mice. Brain Behav.Immun., 21: 975-987, 2007.
10. Johnston NA, Trammell RA, Ball-Kell S, Toth LA. Luminex- and histopathology-based assessment of immune activation in mite-infested mice before and after eradication. JAALAS. Submitted.
11. Toth, L., M. Ding, and R. A. Trammell. "Sleep and Infection." Ed. SR Pandi-Perumal, RR Ruoti, and M. Kramer (eds). Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis (books), 2007. 177-90.
12. Trammell, RA, M Ding, K Jharveri, LA Toth. Inflammation and Sleep. In: Neuroimmunology of Sleep. SR Pandi-Perumal, DP Cardinali, GP Chrousos (eds.). Springer Publishing, 2007. 233-257.
13. Trammell, RA, Toth LA. Genetic Susceptibility and Resistance to Influenza Infection and Disease. Expert Rev Mol Diagn. 2008 Jul;8(4):515-29.
14. Ray M, Rogers LO, Trammell.R.A., Toth LA. Fatigue and sleep during cancer and chemotherapy: translational rodent models. Comparative Medicine 58(3):234-245, 2008