AbstractBackgroundIncreasing evidence suggests a link between sleep and late‐life Alzheimer disease’s (AD) pathology. We investigated whether sleep degradation might be accompanied by faster AD pathology accumulation and/or whether early AD pathologic changes might be accompanied by sleep changes before the onset of cognitive symptoms.MethodWe investigated 228 PREVENT‐AD participants with available sleep data who underwent Aβ, [18F] NAV‐4694, and tau,[18F] Flortaucipir, positron emission tomography (PET). Longitudinal subjective sleep quality data were available for 191 participants (follow‐up:1.03±0.19y), longitudinal objective sleep data measured with actigraphy was available for 152 participants (follow‐up:2.5±1.24y), and longitudinal PET scans were available for 104 participants (follow‐up:4.3±0.24y). We assessed sleep quality using the Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI) global score along with 7‐day actigraphy to indicate sleep duration, efficiency, and fragmentation index. Daily variation in sleep was measured using cross‐sectional and longitudinal standard deviations across the 7 days of actigraphy. Linear mixed effect models tested for longitudinal association of baseline sleep measures with PET outcomes over time. We also examined whether an increase in PET AD tracer uptake predicted changes in sleep quality and day‐to‐day variability. Every model controlled for age and sex.ResultWe found no association between sleep measures and Aβ PET. Higher baseline PSQI scores were associated with higher levels of tau over time (p = 0.004, R2 = 0.034, 𝛽 = 0.007, Fig.1, A). Higher baseline variability of sleep duration and fragmentation index were also associated with higher levels of tau longitudinally (p = 0.001, R2 = 0.05, 𝛽 = 0.001, Fig.1, B; p = 0.029, R2 = 0.022, 𝛽 = 0.01; Fig.1, C). Furthermore, increased tau at baseline was associated with lower sleep quality (p = 0.006, R2 = 0.026, 𝛽 = 4.12, Fig.2, A), and with higher sleep duration variability over time (p = 0.004, R2 = 0.06, 𝛽 = 61.56, Fig.1, B.)ConclusionPoor sleep quality and higher day‐to‐day sleep variability in older age could contribute to faster rate of tau pathology accumulation, which could in turn disrupt sleep further. Targeting sleep disturbances may therefore serve in delaying tau burden and slowing down disease progression.
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