Although daytime sleep in senior residents is rather typical, prolonged napping could signify Alzheimers illness or other dementias.
Daytime sleep duration triples after Alzheimers medical diagnosis, UCSF-Harvard led study programs.
Daytime napping in the elderly is a normal part of aging, however it may likewise foreshadow Alzheimers disease and other dementias. According to a new research study, once dementia or its normal precursor, moderate cognitive problems, is diagnosed, the frequency and/or duration of sleeping boosts quickly.
The study, led by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Harvard Medical School together with Brigham and Womens Hospital, its mentor affiliate, departs from the theory that daytime napping in older individuals serves simply to make up for bad nighttime sleep. Rather, it indicates work by other UCSF scientists recommending that dementia may affect the wake-promoting nerve cells in essential areas of the brain, the researchers state in their paper that was recently published in Alzheimers and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimers Association..
” We found the association between extreme daytime napping and dementia remained after changing for nighttime amount and quality of sleep,” said co-senior author Yue Leng, MD, PhD, of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences..
” This suggested that the role of daytime napping is very important itself and is independent of nighttime sleep,” stated Leng, who partnered with Kun Hu, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, in senior-authoring the paper.
Watch-Like Devices, Annual Evaluations Used to Measure Naps, Cognition.
In the research study, the researchers tracked information from 1,401 seniors, who had been followed for as much as 14 years by the Rush Memory and Aging Project at the Rush Alzheimers Disease Center in Chicago. The participants, whose average age was 81 and of whom roughly three-quarters were female, wore a watch-like gadget that tracked movement. Each extended period of non-activity from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. was interpreted as a nap..
The gadget was worn every year constantly for approximately 14 days, and once a year each participant went through a battery of neuropsychological tests to evaluate cognition. At the start of the study 75.7% of participants had no cognitive impairment, while 19.5% had moderate cognitive disability and 4.1% had Alzheimers disease..
For individuals who did not establish cognitive problems, everyday daytime napping increased by an average 11 minutes annually. The rate of increase doubled after a medical diagnosis of mild cognitive problems to a total of 24 minutes and nearly tripled to a total of 68 minutes after a diagnosis of Alzheimers disease..
When the scientists took a look at the 24% of individuals who had regular cognition at the start of the research study however developed Alzheimers 6 years later, and compared them with those whose cognition remained steady, they found differences in snoozing habits. Individuals who snoozed more than an hour a day had a 40% higher danger of establishing Alzheimers than those who napped less than an hour a day; and individuals who snoozed a minimum of as soon as a day had a 40% higher danger of developing Alzheimers than those who snoozed less than once a day.
The research verifies the results of a 2019 study, of which Leng was the first author, that discovered older males who snoozed two hours a day had higher odds of developing cognitive problems that those who napped less than 30 minutes a day. The current study constructs on these findings by assessing both daytime napping and cognition each year, thus resolving directionality, Leng notes..
Loss of Wake-Promoting Neurons May Account for Longer Naps.
According to the researchers, boost in sleeping might be described by a further 2019 research study, by other UCSF researchers, comparing the postmortem brains of individuals with Alzheimers illness to those without cognitive problems. Those with Alzheimers disease were discovered to have fewer wake-promoting nerve cells in three brain areas. These neuronal modifications appear to be connected to tau tangles– a trademark of Alzheimers, identified by increased activity of enzymes triggering the protein to misfold and clump.
” It is possible that our observed associations of extreme daytime napping at baseline, and increased risk for Alzheimers disease during follow-up, may show the effect of Alzheimers illness pathology at preclinical stages,” the authors kept in mind..
The study reveals for the first time that napping and Alzheimers disease “appear to be driving each others modifications in a bi-directional way,” said Leng, who is also associated with the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “I do not believe we have sufficient proof to draw conclusions about a causal relationship, that its the sleeping itself that triggered cognitive aging, but extreme daytime napping might be a signal of sped up aging or cognitive aging process,” she said..
” It would be very interesting for future research studies to explore whether intervention of naps may assist decrease age-related cognitive decline.”.
For more on this study, see “Vicious Cycle” Discovered Between Excessive Daytime Napping and Alzheimers Dementia.
Recommendation: “Daytime napping and Alzheimers dementia: A prospective bidirectional relationship” by Peng Li, Lei Gao, Lei Yu, Xi Zheng, Ma Cherrysse Ulsa, Hui-Wen Yang, Arlen Gaba, Kristine Yaffe, David A. Bennett, Aron S. Buchman, Kun Hu and Yue Leng, 17 March 2022, Alzheimers & & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimers Association.DOI: 10.1002/ alz.12636.
Authors: First authors are Peng Li, PhD, and Lei Gao, MBBS, of Brigham and Womens Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Co-authors are Xi Zheng, Ma Cherrysse Ulsa, Hui-Wen Yang, PhD, and Arlen Gaba of Brigham and Womens Hospital; Kristine Yaffe, MD, of UCSF; Lei Yu, PhD, David A. Bennett, MD, and Aron S. Buchman, MD, of Rush University Medical Center..
Funding: Research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (RF1AG064312, RF1AG059867, R01AG56352, R01AG17917, T32GM007592, R03AG067985 and R00AG056598), and the BrightFocus Foundation Alzheimers Research Program (A2020886S)..
In the research study, the researchers tracked data from 1,401 senior citizens, who had actually been followed for up to 14 years by the Rush Memory and Aging Project at the Rush Alzheimers Disease Center in Chicago. The participants, whose average age was 81 and of whom around three-quarters were female, used a watch-like device that tracked movement. According to the researchers, increase in sleeping may be described by a more 2019 research study, by other UCSF scientists, comparing the postmortem brains of people with Alzheimers illness to those without cognitive problems. Those with Alzheimers illness were found to have fewer wake-promoting neurons in 3 brain regions. These neuronal changes appear to be linked to tau tangles– a trademark of Alzheimers, identified by increased activity of enzymes triggering the protein to misfold and clump.