New research reveals that older adults with sleep problems also experience reduced brain volume.
The cross-sectional study demonstrated that longer sleep duration and daytime sleepiness were linked to a lower volume in the entorhinal cortex and reduced gray matter volume. Angeliki Tsapanou, MSc reported findings at the American Academy of Neurology’s 68th Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
“According to our study, self-reported daytime sleepiness is associated with changes in gray and cortical matter volume. Furthermore, nighttime sleep duration is associated with left entorhinal volume in a large heterogeneous sample of older adults,” remarked Tsapanou.
The study included 501 adults whose sleep disturbance, snoring, sleep with shortness of breathe or with headache, sleep adequacy, and sleep somnolence were assessed through the 12-item Medical Outcomes Study Sleep Scale.
T-weighted MRI was also conducted to gain regional brain volumes and linear regression models were used to study the relationship between sleep problems and brain volume.
