Excess daytime drowsiness may lead to pre-dementia syndrome

This is alarming news for senior citizens with sleep struggles.

Septuagenarians who experience excessive drowsiness during the day or a lack of enthusiasm for activities due to poor sleep habits may be more likely to develop motoric cognitive risk syndrome (MCR), which can lead to dementia, a new study finds.

“Our findings emphasize the need for screening for sleep issues,” said study author Dr. Victoire Leroy of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. “There’s potential that people could get help with their sleep issues and prevent cognitive decline later in life.”

Leroy’s team had 445 dementia-free adults with an average age of 76 fill out a sleep questionnaire and walk on a treadmill at the start of the study and then annually for an average of three years.

MCR patients tend to walk slowly and struggle with their memory. It’s estimated that 2% to 27% of the global population have this condition.

Leroy’s questionnaire asked how often the participants wake up in the middle of the night, how often they have trouble staying awake while driving and how much they struggle to complete tasks, among other questions.

The researchers found that 177 participants met the definition for poor sleepers, while 268 were considered good sleepers.   

Forty-two people had MCR at the start of the study, and another 36 developed it.

Once researchers adjusted for age, depression and other health troubles, they determined that people with excessive daytime sleepiness and a lack of enthusiasm are more than three times more likely to develop MCR than people without those problems.

The study authors say their work does not prove certain sleep-related woes cause MCR — it only shows an association.

“More research needs to be done to look at the relationship between sleep issues and cognitive decline and the role played by motoric cognitive risk syndrome,” Leroy said. “We also need studies to explain the mechanisms that link these sleep disturbances to motoric cognitive risk syndrome and cognitive decline.”

The findings were published Wednesday in the online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

A limitation of the research — supported by the National Institute on Aging — was that participants shared their own sleep information, which may not have been an accurate representation.

Nearly 7 million Americans have a dementia diagnosis.

Risk factors include lower academic achievement, hearing loss, high blood pressure, tobacco use, obesity, depression, diabetes, excess alcohol intake, traumatic brain injury, air pollution, social isolation, vision loss, high cholesterol and a sedentary lifestyle.

Experts generally recommend adults get seven to nine hours of sleep nightly.