‘Bad Sleep Could Be Sign Of Alzheimer’s Disease’

Sleeping on Duty!

People who had disturbed sleep and excessive daytime tiredness were more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s within the next two years

Poor sleep could be an early sign of the disease before symptoms such as memory loss appear . Older people who repeatedly get a bad night’s sleep may be at an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

This, along with feeling tired during the day and the use of sleeping pills, was found to be associated with an increased likelihood of developing the condition.

The new research, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, found those who displayed such characteristics were more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s within the following two years.

The greater the extent of the sleep problems, the more severe were the symptoms of the subsequent disease.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists said: ‘Patients with Alzheimer’s often complain of changes in their sleep patterns during the early stages of the disease. In healthy people, for example, daytime naps usually last around 20 minutes, but they can be up to three hours long in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.’

Roxanne Sterniczuk, a neurophysiologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, wanted to determine how early these changes occur and if they could predict a person’s future risk of developing the disease.

She and her colleagues analysed data from around 14,600 healthy people, collected as part of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). This involved people aged 50 and over from 12 European countries.

“Increased daytime sleepiness was the biggest predictor,” Ms Sterniczuk told Nature.

She added that small changes in the sleep-wake cycle appeared to be taking place before any of the symptoms of the disease (such as memory loss) appeared.

It’s not yet clear whether the sleep disturbances are a signal of changes to the brain or if they cause the disease to progress.

The new research adds to growing evidence that sleep patterns and Alzheimer’s disease might be linked in some way. 

Earlier this year scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine found that people who woke up more than five times an hour were more likely to have preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. This is where any clinical symptoms such as memory loss have yet to be noticed.

Another study using mice, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, showed that when the plaques in the brain associated with the disease first developed, the mice started having disrupted sleep.

One key problem with Alzheimer’s is that those suffering from it may not show the classes signs such as memory loss until the disease is quite progressed.

At this point, parts of the brain will have been destroyed, meaning treatment will be very difficult or maybe even impossible.