Abstract
Persons with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) often complain about sleep problems. There is less known about objective sleep-electroencephalography (EEG) dimensions within naturalistic conditions (i.e., home and/or familiar setting). The present cross-sectional study examined the associations between objective and subjective sleep, depression, physical activity scores, and MS-related information among PwMS in their familiar setting. The sample consisted of 16 PwMS (mean age: 50.3 years; median Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS): 5.5) who completed questionnaires covering subjective sleep (symptoms of insomnia, restless legs syndrome (RLS) and sleep-disordered breathing), as well as daytime sleepiness, subjective physical activity, depression, and MS-related information (fatigue, EDSS; disease-modifying treatments). Objective sleep was assessed with a mobile sleep-EEG device under naturalist conditions within the home. Descriptively, better objective sleep patterns were associated with lower sleep complaints (rs = −0.51) and daytime sleepiness (rs = −0.43), and with lower symptoms of RLS (rs = −0.35), but not with sleep-disordered breathing (rs = −0.17). More deep sleep was associated with higher moderate physical activity levels (rs = 0.56). Objective sleep parameters were not associated with vigorous physical activity levels (rs < 0.25). Descriptively, moderate and vigorous physical activity scores were associated with lower symptoms of RLS (rs = −0.43 to −0.47). Results from this small study carried out under naturalistic conditions suggest that among PwMS, better objective sleep correlated with better subjective sleep and higher moderate physical activity levels.
Highlights
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated, neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system [1,2]
Among persons with MS (PwMS), poor sleep is associated with daytime sleepiness [20], fatigue [21,22], and cognitive impairments [23,24]
The key findings of the present cross-sectional study were that favorable objective sleep parameters were associated with dimensions of favorable subjective sleep among a small sample of PwMS
Summary
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated, neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system [1,2]. Among non-clinical and clinical samples, poor sleep is associated with a broad range of unfavorable psychological functions such as symptoms of depression [13,14,15,16,17,18] or poor emotion regulation [19]. There is sufficient evidence that higher physical activity levels are associated with better objective and subjective sleep, both among non-clinical and clinical samples [14,25,26,27,28,29,30,31], and among PwMS [32,33,34].
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