BALTIMORE – Sleep disturbances are common in assisted-living facilities and may be linked to a variety of cognitive disorders, Patrick J. Raue, Ph.D., said in a poster session at the annual meeting of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry.
The researchers enrolled 198 assisted-living-facility residents who were chosen by randomly selecting room numbers from facilities that were randomly selected throughout Maryland. A specially designed 11-item questionnaire was used to identify symptoms of daytime sleepiness and insomnia. A consensus panel that included geriatric psychiatrists and nurses determined participant diagnoses.
Data showed that 66.5% of participants had dementia, and within this group 38% had no sleep disturbance and 62% had sleep disturbance of some kind, including insomnia (22%), excessive daytime sleepiness (23%), or both (17%), said Dr. Raue of the department of psychiatry at Cornell University, New York.
In participants with insomnia only, 45% had no dementia, 43% had Alzheimer's disease, 4% had vascular disease, and 9% had cognitive disorder not otherwise specified (NOS). In those with heightened symptoms of daytime sleepiness only, researchers found that 16% had no dementia, 44% had Alzheimer's disease, 34% had cognitive disorder NOS, and 6% had vascular disease. In participants who had both dementia and insomnia, 23% had Alzheimer's disease, 17% had vascular disease, 17% had cognitive disorder NOS, and 43% had none of these other ailments.