Articles

Daytime Sleepiness and Sleep Inadequacy as Risk Factors for Dementia

Tsapanou, Angeliki; Manly, Jennifer J.; Gu, Yian; Schupf, Nicole; Tang, Mingxin; Zimmerman, Molly; Scarmeas, Nikolaos; Stern, Yaakov

Background/Aims: To examine the association between self-reported sleep problems and incidence of dementia in community-dwelling elderly people. Methods: 1,041 nondemented participants over 65 years old were examined longitudinally. Sleep problems were estimated using the RAND Medical Outcomes Study Sleep Scale examining sleep disturbance, snoring, sleep short of breath or with a headache, sleep adequacy, and sleep somnolence. Cox regression analysis was used to examine the association between sleep problems and risk for incident dementia. Age, gender, education, ethnicity, APOE-ε4, stroke, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and depression were included as covariates. Results: Over 3 years of follow-up, 966 (92.8%) participants remained nondemented, while 78 (7.2%) developed dementia. In unadjusted models, sleep inadequacy (‘Get the amount of sleep you need') at the initial visit was associated with increased risk of incident dementia (HR = 1.20; 95% CI 1.02-1.42; p = 0.027). Adjusting for all the covariates, increased risk of incident dementia was still associated with sleep inadequacy (HR = 1.20; 95% CI 1.01-1.42; p = 0.040), as well as with increased daytime sleepiness (‘Have trouble staying awake during the day') (HR = 1.24; 95% CI 1.00-1.54; p = 0.047). Conclusion: Our results suggest that sleep inadequacy and increased daytime sleepiness are risk factors for dementia in older adults, independent of demographic and clinical factors.

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Also Published In

Title
Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders Extra
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1159/000431311

More About This Work

Academic Units
Neurology
Taub Institute
Biostatistics
Sergievsky Center
Epidemiology
Publisher
Karger
Published Here
February 22, 2016