Apnea therapy may help cognition in Alzheimer’s
By Will Boggs, MD
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For patients with Alzheimer’s disease and obstructive sleep apnea, treatment with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) seems to improve cognitive function, according to a report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
“Do not hesitate to treat older demented (or non-demented) patients who have sleep apnea,” Dr. Sonia Ancoli-Israel told Reuters Health. “The decision for treatment should not be based on age.”
Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when airway passages become blocked during sleep, cutting off breathing for brief but frequent periods. Major symptoms include loud snoring and daytime sleepiness.
Continuous positive airway pressure is a device that delivers air through the airways using specially designed nasal masks or pillows. The air flow creates enough pressure to keep the airways open.
Ancoli-Israel and colleagues from the University of California San Diego, in La Jolla, studied 52 elderly patients with obstructive sleep apnea and mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease. The subjects were randomly assigned to 6 weeks’ CPAP or 3 weeks’ sham treatment followed by therapeutic CPAP for another 3 weeks.
As expected, CPAP treatment significantly increased airflow, whereas placebo CPAP had no effect, the authors report. After 3 weeks of CPAP, significant improvements on individual portions of various standardized tests were seen.
CPAP was well tolerated and improved patients’ “sleep, their daytime sleepiness, and their cognition,” Ancoli-Israel said. “The caregivers also liked it and felt having the patient treated also improved their own sleep.”
“We are conducting a similar study now in Parkinson’s disease to examine the effect of CPAP treatment of sleep apnea on non-motor symptoms,” Ancoli-Israel added.
SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, November 2008.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Related Posts:
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Obese children who have difficulty breathing while they sleep have excessive daytime sleepiness compared with slimmer children who are also chronic snorers, new research in the journal Pediatrics shows. The symptoms in heavy children are “strikingly reminiscent of excessive daytime sleepiness patterns in adults with obstructive sleep apnea,” Drs. David Gozal
Full Post: Obese kids who snore more sleepy in the daytime
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Amy Norton NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People with severe sleep apnea tend to eat a less healthy diet than people with milder apnea symptoms and those without the disorder, a new study suggests. Obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, occurs when the soft tissues at the back of the throat temporarily collapse during sleep, causing repeated
Full Post: Poorer diets seen in people with sleep apnea
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A dangerous type of snoring known as sleep apnea can cause stroke by decreasing blood flow, raising blood pressure and harming the brain’s ability to modulate these changes, researchers reported on Tuesday. The study may help explain why people with sleep apnea are more likely to have
Full Post: Study shows how sleep apnea may cause stroke
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The results of a study suggest that compression devices can produce significant improvements in patients with restless legs syndrome, a movement disorder that causes uncomfortable sensations in the legs that worsen when a person is inactive, such as during sleep. Drug therapy for restless legs syndrome (RLS) may be ineffective or
Full Post: Compression devices calm restless legs: study
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among children who undergo removal of their adenoids and tonsils to correct breathing problems when they’re sleeping, obesity does not necessarily predict an unfavorable outcome, researchers from Greece report. Obesity and enlarged tonsils are both linked to interrupted breathing or apnea during sleep in childhood, but the relative importance of one
Full Post: Tonsillectomy results unaffected by kids’ obesity