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Sleep disordered breathing accelerates Alzheimer's, dementia later in life

Individuals with sleep disordered breathing who go without CPAP therapy are at an increased risk for developing mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease at an earlier age than people without sleep disordered breathing, according to study results.

Ricardo S. Osorio, MD, of the NYU School of Medicine, and colleagues analyzed the data of 2,470 adults aged 55 to 90 years from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative to determine if sleep disordered breathing is associated with an earlier age at mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease.

Ricardo S. Osorio

The database consists of people labeled as cognitively normal, people with early or late mild cognitive impairment, or people with early or late Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Participants were placed into groups depending on how they reported experiencing and treating sleep disordered breathing. Participants were listed as sleep apnea positive without any CPAP therapy, sleep apnea positive with CPAP therapy and the remaining participants.

The researchers then performed analysis on three subsets. The first excluded participants with missing data, the second excluded participants with ambiguous group allocation and the third was limited to participants with incident mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease as documented by clinical assessment during follow-up.

Participants who had a form of sleep disordered breathing without CPAP therapy had a younger age at Alzheimer’s disease onset (83.46 years vs. 88.13 years).

Participants who had sleep disordered breathing without CPAP therapy also developed mild cognitive impairment earlier in life in all three subsets (73.48 years vs. 79.08 years, 73.06 years vs. 79.15 years, 75.21 years vs. 83.45 years).

Participants treated without CPAP were younger at mild cognitive impairment onset when compared with participants treated with CPAP (72.63 years vs. 82.1 years).

While the results indicate sleep apnea accelerates the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, Osorio says more research is needed.

“These findings were made in an observational study and as such, do not indicate a cause-and-effect relationship,” he said in a press release. “However, we are now focusing our research on CPAP treatment and memory and thinking decline over decades, as well as looking specifically at markers of brain cell death and deterioration.” – by Ryan McDonald

Disclosure: Osorio reports no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the full study for a list of all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.