Sleep Patterns May Offer Clues to Alzheimer's

A study of 119 people 60 and older published in Science Translational Medicine sought to explore the link between poor sleep and Alzheimer's, reports HealthDay News . Eighty percent of the participants had no thinking or memory problems, while the rest just had mild problems. Those with less slow-wave sleep exhibited elevated levels of the brain protein tau, a possible symptom of Alzheimer's. "We saw this inverse relationship between decreased slow-wave sleep and more tau protein in people who were either cognitively normal or very mildly impaired, meaning that reduced slow-wave activity may be a marker for the transition between normal and impaired," notes Washington University Sleep Medicine Center Professor Brendan Lucey. "Measuring how people sleep may be a noninvasive way to screen for Alzheimer's disease before or just as people begin to develop problems with memory and thinking." Lucey also observes that subjects with higher tau levels "were actually sleeping more at night and napping more in the day, but they weren't getting as good quality sleep." He suggests sleep monitoring could be a potential supplement to brain scans or cerebrospinal fluid analysis for identifying early hallmarks of Alzheimer's.