Sleep Apnea Associated With Deteriorating Brain Health

In a recent study, it is shown that having sleep apnea and getting less deep sleep is connected to the development of brain biomarkers that are linked to an increased risk of stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and cognitive decline.

The study’s authors stated that there was merely a link and no proof that these sleep problems caused the alterations in the brain or that they did the reverse.

Their research has been presented in the Neurology journal.

Previous research has linked sleep issues to cognitive decline and dementia, and this latest study sought to investigate probable explanations.

The Mayo Clinic researchers looked at two indicators of brain health in adults who had sleep apnea. They were able to detect symptoms of aging in the brain’s white matter and nerve connections by using an MRI image of the brain.

The findings are not conclusive enough to establish that sleep apnea causes cognitive decline loss or stroke, but they do push scientists in the right direction for more research.

According to researcher Diego Z. Carvalho, MD, the discoveries are important because there is no treatment for these changes in the brain, so we need to find ways to prevent them from happening or getting worse.

The study, which was published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, comprised 140 people adults with sleep apnea, with an average age of 73. The researchers examined data from MRI scans of the people’s brains as well as nighttime sleep studies.

Reduced deep sleep (also called slow-wave or non-REM stage 3) was closely associated with how old people’s brains looked to be. The less time someone spent in deep sleep, the older their brains seemed.

The participants in the study had the most prevalent type of sleep apnea, known as obstructive sleep apnea. Even when someone is trying to breathe, the disease causes obstructed airflow into or out of the mouth or nose.

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