Associations among clinical characteristics of sleep quality, cognitive performance, and brain architecture in Thai dementia spectrum disorders

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundSleep disorders are increased with advancing age. Poor sleep quality is a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia. We aimed 1) to explore the relationship between sleep quality, sleep architecture and cognition; 2) to investigate the association between brain volume and sleep parameters.MethodA total of 95 participants (70 female, mean age 67.18 ± 10 years) were included in this study. Thirty were those with major cognitive disorder patients, twenty‐five individuals had mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and forty were normal controls. Sleep parameters were measured using wrist actigraphy and subjective sleep questioners. The participants were evaluated with high‐resolution MRI. Three Dimensional sequences on Free‐Surfer morphometric procedure was used as the automated segmentation method to obtain brain volume. Demographic data, medical history, sleep characteristics, neuropsychological and mood evaluation were collected from participants.ResultMCI patients had significantly lower sleep efficiency than cognitive healthy persons, 81.30 + 7 .39 % vs. 85.12 + 5.09 %, p=0.04. 66 % of the participants had poor sleep quality. Prevalence of probable REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) and restless leg syndrome was high in dementia group. Longer sleep latency was associated with worse performance on global cognition. Total sleep time was associated with entorhinal corex volume and hippocampal volume. Sleep latency was associated with hippocampal volumeConclusionSleep disorders were common in both cognitively healthy persons and dementia spectrum disorders. Lower sleep quality and disturbance of sleep maintenance were associated with the development of cognitive impairment. The causes and the consequences of poor sleep quality in patients with dementia spectrum disorders needed to be explored.