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Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a very common disease with a prevalence that ranges from 1% to 6% in children. It is characterized by intermittent partial or complete occlusion of the upper airway during sleep, leading to recurrent arousals and disturbed sleep architecture, to neurocognitive disorders and alterations in homeostatic gas exchange. Cardiovascular complications may develop in children with OSA through various mechanisms including activation and dysregulation of the sympathetic nervous system, induction of pro-inflammatory and pro-oxidant status and increased risk of systemic hypertension. As the deleterious effects of OSA on the cardio-vascular system may start early in life, in this brief review we focused our attention both on early and late cardiological changes induced by apnoeic events in the paediatric population, by reviewing recent findings in the literature.

Spheroids are multicellular systems with an interesting rheology giving rise to elasto-visco-plastic properties. They are good tumor models, but the role of the extracellular matrix (ECM) is not fully understood. ECM is an important link between cells and may have a significant impact on tissue organization. Here we determine viscoelastic properties of spheroids including different collagen I amounts using AFM and predict new frequency-dependent properties leading to soft glassy rheology behavior. A unified model - similar to single cell behavior - is proposed and discussed, while complementary confocal experiments reveal the microstructure of spheroids, with collagen I fibers serving as a skeleton for cells, thus reinforcing the spheroid viscoelastic behavior.