Neurology
Sleep Disturbance and Dementia Onset: A Cohort Study in Elderly Hispanics in the Sacramento area Miguel Cuevas* Miguel Cuevas Cuevas Cuevas Cuevas Cuevas UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
Introduction
Sleep disturbances are common in dementia but less is known about their contributions to dementia onset.
Methods
A cohort of 1,247 older Hispanics from Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging were followed from 1998 to 2007. Sleep scores were calculated based on questions at baseline and follow-up visits. We categorized these scores into stable healthy, improving, worsening, and stable disturbed sleep patterns and performed Cox proportional hazard regression on dementia/cognitive impairment without dementia (CIND) adjusting for age, gender, education, smoking, physical activity, rural/urban setting, comorbidities, ambient noise, and APOE status.
Results
We estimated an increased hazard (HR=2.14, 95%CI: 1.30–3.55) of developing dementia/CIND among those with worsening compared to stable healthy sleep patterns. An increased hazard (HR=1.93, 95%CI: 0.94–3.95) was also observed among those reporting stable disturbed sleep.
Conclusion
This study indicates that worsening and consistently disturbed sleep patterns adversely affect the cognitive health of older Hispanics.