Kitty Lui, University of California San Diego - Poor Sleep Tied to Alzheimer’s Risk in Older Women

Poor sleep is tied to Alzheimer’s risk in older women.

Kitty Lui, doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of California San Diego, discusses these findings.

Faculty Bio:

Kitty is a doctoral student at the San Diego State University / UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology (Neuropsychology track). She is particularly interested in understanding why women are at elevated risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Her doctoral research has focused primarily on the sex-specific impacts of sleep disturbances on Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers, in hopes that this work could inform intervention and prevention for the disease for each sex.

Transcripts:

We recently published a study that found sleep complaints may be an important Alzheimer’s disease risk factor in older women with a higher genetic predisposition to the disease. The findings suggest that women with a higher genetic risk for Alzheimer’s who reported poorer sleep also showed greater memory difficulties and more Alzheimer’s-related brain changes.We examined 69 women aged 65 years and older participating in the Women Inflammation Tau Study, an ongoing project at UC San Diego focused on aging and Alzheimer’s disease risk. Participants completed questionnaires about their sleep quality, underwent memory testing and received brain scans that measured tau, a protein that accumulates abnormally in Alzheimer’s disease.We found that poorer self-reported sleep was associated with worse visual memory performance and greater tau accumulation in brain regions affected early in Alzheimer’s disease — but only among women with higher genetic risk. Women with lower genetic risk did not show the same relationship between sleep complaints, memory and tau buildup. The results add to growing evidence that sleep disturbances and Alzheimer’s disease may reinforce one another over time. Previous studies have suggested that disrupted sleep can contribute to the buildup of abnormal tau proteins, while Alzheimer’s-related brain changes may also interfere with healthy sleep patterns. Because women account for nearly two-thirds of Alzheimer’s cases and frequently report poorer sleep quality than men, sleep may represent an important and potentially modifiable risk factor in older women.Self-reported sleep assessments are inexpensive and easy to administer, raising the possibility that sleep complaints could help identify people who may benefit from closer monitoring or early intervention. Improving sleep c