Background: Disturbed sleep has been associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia. Nevertheless, limited information is yet available for the relationship between sleep experiences and longitudinal changes of brain pathologies related to AD. This study aimed to investigate the association between late-life sleep experiences and the prospective changes of in vivo AD pathologies and cerebrovascular injury over 2 years in cognitively normal (CN) old adults.
Method: A total of 225 CN older adults who participated in the Korean Brain Aging Study for the Early Diagnosis and Prediction of Alzheimer's Disease (KBASE) study between 55 and 90 years of age were included. All participants were also systematically interviewed using a structured interview form to determine sleep duration and subjective sleep quality at baseline. All of them underwent a comprehensive clinical assessment, [11C] Pittsburgh Compound B positron emission tomography (PET), [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-PET, and magnetic resonance imaging at baseline and 2-year follow-up. A subset of participants (n = 44) also underwent [18F]AV-1451 PET at baseline and 2-year follow-up. All analyses were adjusted for age, gender, education, apolipoprotein E ε4 status, vascular risk score, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score, and use of sleep medication.
Result: Poor sleep quality at baseline was significantly associated with both higher baseline global Aβ retention and its longitudinal increase over 2 years, but not with other AD neuroimaging markers including tau deposition, AD-related neurodegeneration, and white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volume. There was no significant relationship of sleep duration with any AD neuroimaging markers and WMH volume.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that poor sleep quality in late life may predict or contribute to prospective increase of brain amyloid deposition in the near future.
© 2024 The Alzheimer's Association. Alzheimer's & Dementia published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.