Study connects daytime sleepiness to pre-dementia syndrome
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Senior citizens who experience excessive drowsiness during the day or a lack of enthusiasm for activities due to poor sleep habits could be more likely to develop motoric cognitive risk syndrome (MCR), which can lead to dementia, according to findings in a new study.
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“Our findings emphasize the need for screening for sleep issues,”said study author Dr. Victoire Leroy, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, accotrding to the New York Post. “There’s potential that people could get help with their sleep issues and prevent cognitive decline later in life.”
Leroy’s research team had 445 dementia-free adults with an average age of 76 fill out a sleep questionnaire and walk on a treadmill at the beginning of the study, then annually for an average of three years.
MRC patients tend to walk slowly and struggle with their memory. It is estimated that 2% to 27% of the world’s population has this condition.
The questionnaire asked how often participants wake up in the middle of the night, how often they have trouble staying awake while driving and how much they struggle to complete tasks, among other questions.
Researchers found that 177 participants met the definition of poor sleepers while 268 were determined to be the opposite.
Forty-two people had MCR at the start of the study while an additional 36 developed it.
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Adjusting for age, depression and other health issues, researchers found that people with excessive daytime sleepiness and a lack of enthusiasm are more than three times more likely to develop MCR than people without those problems.
The study’s authors said their work doesn’t prove certain sleep-related woes cause MCR. Rather, it only shows and association.
“More research needs to be done to look at the relationship between sleep issues and cognitive decline and the role played by motoric cognitive risk syndrome,” Leroy said. “We also need studies to explain the mechanisms that link these sleep disturbances to motoric cognitive risk syndrome and cognitive decline.”
The findings were published in the online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
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