Sleep, oxygen, and dementia
Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) has been associated with poor cognition in previous research, but it had been unclear whether SDB preceded this impairment in cognition. New research, co-authored by Susan Redline, a researcher in the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), finds that SDB is associated with and precedes a higher risk of cognitive impairment in older women. These findings will be published in the Aug. 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Even after adjusting for age, body mass index, education, diabetes, and baseline cognitive scores, we found that indices of hypoxia, but not sleep fragmentation or duration, were associated with increased risk for mild cognitive impairment and dementia, suggesting that hypoxia is a likely mechanism through which SDB increases risk for cognitive impairment,” said Redline, who is the Peter C. Farrell Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Researchers studied nearly...