Daytime Drowsiness Increases Risk of Alzheimer's in Seniors, Study Says

In what scientists are calling the first study of its kind, CNN reports that new Mayo Clinic research published this week in the journal JAMA Neurology shows that excessive daytime sleepiness in cognitively normal seniors leads to a build-up of a plaque in the brain called amyloid. Depositing amyloid in brain tissue is the first known preclinical stage of Alzheimer's disease and occurs well before any obvious symptoms of dementia start. "While further research is necessary, this study adds a new question that doctors can ask patients to assess risk and potentially intervene," remarks Dr. Richard Isaacson, Director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian, who was not involved in the study. "I will now proactively ask about excessive daytime sleepiness as one of the many potentially modifiable risk factors for the disease." The Mayo researchers reached out to individuals 70 and older who were enrolled in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging. For inclusion in the study, participants had to have a baseline scan and a later scan of their brains on file, complete a sleep quality questionnaire, and be certified free of dementia by a team of specialists. That process whittled down the initial sample of 2,172 individuals to 283 people with an average age of 77. Test subjects who were most drowsy during the day were found to have greater amounts of Alzheimer's-causing amyloids over the study's two-year period, particularly in the areas of the brain responsible for emotion, memory retrieval, and behavior.