Title: Informant-reported sleep disturbances are associated with behavioral and psychological symptoms in an Asian elderly cohort with cognitive impairment-no dementia
Date: 22 February 2018
Time: 8-9AM
Venue: Seminar Room T09-04, Level 9, NUHS Tower Block
Speaker: Ms Kan Cheuk Ni, Research Assistant, Memory Aging & Cognition Centre, National University Health System, Singapore
Chairperson: A/Prof Ng Tze Pin, Associate Professorial Fellow, Dept of Psychological Medicine, NUS
Brief Abstract:
Sleep disturbances were found to be associated with more behavioral and psychological symptoms (BPS) in early AD patients. However, data on preclinical stages of dementia are lacking. Hence, this study investigated the association between informant-reported sleep disturbances and BPS in dementia-free elderly with varying severity of cognitive impairment in an Asian sample.
Community-living elderly were administered a comprehensive cognitive battery and classified as no cognitive impairment (NCI), cognitive impairment-no dementia (CIND)-mild (1–2 impaired domains), and CIND-moderate (≥3 impaired domains). The Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) was used to assess for the presence and severity of sleep disturbances and BPS. Among CIND subjects, those with sleep disturbances had higher total BPS burden than those without. Furthermore, CIND-moderate subjects with sleep disturbances had more delusions, hallucinations, anxiety, irritability, aberrant motor behavior, and appetite change. The exhibition of both sleep disturbances and other BPS was 2.5 times more likely to have CIND-moderate than NCI or CIND-mild.
The findings highlighted the association between sleep disturbances and non-cognitive changes among community elderly with cognitive impairment, particularly those with CIND-moderate, which carries higher risk of developing dementia.