Sleep disturbances are prevalent in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), affecting people during its early stages. In a new paper published in the Journal of Sleep Research, Spanish researchers from the Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center (BBRC) investigated associations between subjective sleep measures and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers of AD in people with mild cognitive symptoms from the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (EPAD) Longitudinal Cohort Study, considering the influence of memory performance. A total of 442 participants aged >50 years with a Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) score of 0.5 completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index questionnaire and underwent neuropsychological assessment, magnetic resonance imaging acquisition, and CSF sampling.
Authors analysed the relationship of sleep quality with CSF AD biomarkers and cognitive performance in separated multivariate linear regression models, adjusting for covariates. Poorer cross-sectional sleep quality was associated with lower CSF levels of phosphorylated tau and total tau alongside better immediate and delayed memory performance. Congratulations to the authors: Laura Stankeviciute, Jonathan Blackman, Núria Tort-Colet, Ana Fernández-Arcos, Gonzalo Sánchez-Benavides, Marc Suárez-Calvet, Álex Iranzo, José Luis Molinuevo, Juan Domingo Gispert, Elizabeth Coulthard, Oriol Grau-Rivera. You can read the paper here: