Excessive daytime sleepiness linked to increase in Alzheimer’s biomarker

Elderly individuals who have excessive daytime sleepiness might be more susceptible to accumulation of an Alzheimer’s disease (AD) biomarker, results of a prospective, longitudinal cohort study suggest.

In the study, excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) was associated with increased accumulation of beta-amyloid, an important biomarker of AD that manifests in early preclinical stages, wrote first author Diego Z. Carvalho, MD, and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. The report was published online March 12 in JAMA Neurology.

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“It remains unclear whether EDS is a result of greater sleep instability, synaptic or network overload, or neurodegeneration of wakefulness-promoting centers,” Dr. Carvalho and colleagues wrote in their report. “However, participants with EDS were more vulnerable to AD pathologic processes.”