This was revealed by a study conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Additional evidence has emerged, described in an article published in the journal Aging, linking the lack of sleep, the dementia and the mortality in adults more Senior citizens. In more detail, the researchers led by Rebecca S. Robbins, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital di Boston, write that “sleep disturbances and insufficiency have been shown to be associated with both the development and progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and all-cause mortality.”
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However, research on this topic has so far yielded mixed results and “few studies have included a full set of sleep characteristics in a single review with respect to the incidence of dementia and all-cause mortality.” This is the reason for the analysis conducted by Robbins and colleagues.
In the current study, Robbins’ team identified 2,812 adults aged 65 and over since National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a nationally representative longitudinal study of Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and over in the United States.
Participants completed sleep disturbance and duration surveys in 2013 (1,575 individuals) and 2014 (1,237 individuals), and the researchers examined the relationship between sleep disturbance and deficiency and the incidence of dementia and all-cause mortality in the 5 following years. The mean age of the study participants was 76.9 years, 60% were female, and 72% were Caucasian.
Overall, about 60% of participants reported never or rarely had problems with alertness, about half said they rarely or never experienced sleepiness, and more than half said they fell asleep in 15 minutes or less. . About 70% rated their sleep quality as good or very good, and more than 90% said they never or rarely snored. The researchers examined the relationships between sleep characteristics and the development of incident dementia over the course of five years.
In a fully adjusted Cox multivariate analysis, people who slept 5 hours or less per night had about twice the risk of incident dementia than those who slept longer (HR, 2.04). The risk of dementia was also higher among those who took 30 minutes or more to fall asleep (HR, 1.45). Additionally, the risk of all-cause mortality was significantly higher among individuals who reported:
- having difficulty maintaining alertness for a few days or for most days / every day (HR, 1.49 and 1.65, respectively);
- regularly napping a few days or most days / every day (HR, 1.38 and 1.73);
- to have poor or bad sleep quality (HR, 1.75);
- sleep for a maximum of 5 hours each night (HR, 2.38).
The study results, the researchers note, have limitations due to several factors, including: 1) a population representing only a quarter of the NHATS cohort, which prevented nationally representative estimates; 2) the availability of only two years of sleep data; 3) small sample sizes for some response categories.
However, they state, “our study contributes to the sleep literature among aging populations in its assessment of incident dementia and all-cause mortality and a range of sleep characteristics among older adults.” In particular, “short sleep duration was a strong predictor of both incident dementia and all-cause mortality, suggesting that this may be a feature of sleep that is important – beyond other predictors – of adverse outcomes among adults. older “. Indeed, they conclude, future areas for research include the development of novel behavioral interventions to improve sleep in this population.
Nurse Times editorial staff
Fonte: PharmaStar
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