Sleep Habits in Mild Cognitive Impairment

We explored the relationship between sleep disturbances and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in community-dwelling seniors. Recent evidence suggests that sleep habits are differentially compromised in different subtypes of MCI, but the relationship between sleep disruption and MCI remains poorly understood. We gathered daily objective measures of sleep disturbance from 45 seniors, including 16 with MCI (mean age, 86.9 +/- 4.3 y), over a 6-month period. We also collected self-report measures of sleep disturbance. Although there were no differences between groups in any of our self-report measures, we found that amnestic MCI (aMCI) volunteers had less disturbed sleep than both nonamnestic MCI (naMCI) and cognitively intact volunteers, as measured objectively by movement in bed at night (F-2,F-1078 = 4.30, P = 0.05), wake after sleep onset (F-2,F-1078 = 41.6, P < 0.001), and number of times up at night (F-2,F-1078 = 26.7, P < 0.001). The groups did not differ in total sleep time. In addition, the aMCI group had less day-to-day variability in these measures than the intact and naMCI volunteers. In general, the naMCI volunteers showed a level of disturbed sleep that was intermediate to that of aMCI and intact volunteers. These differences in sleep disruption between aMCI and naMCI may be related to differences in the pathology underlying these MCI subtypes.