Taking Out the Garbage During Sleep, and Alzheimer Pathology

We know that adequate sleep is important to health. Three research groups recently explored links between sleep and dementia.

Spira and colleagues longitudinally studied 70 participants (mean age, 76; 47% women) with serial neuroimaging and assessments of cognition, mood, and sleep quality. On positron emission tomography (mean age, 78), greater β-amyloid (Aβ) burden globally and in the precuneus was associated with self-reported shorter sleep duration; greater precuneus Aβ burden was associated with worse sleep quality.

Lim and colleagues followed 698 individuals with 10 days of actigraphy, APOE genotyping, and serial cognitive assessments (baseline mean age, 82; 77% women) for a mean follow-up of 3.5 years. Baseline sleep consolidation did …