Sleep apnea is a disorder in which a person stops breathing and resumes breathing at any time while they sleep. This disorder requires a person to be given breathing assistance while they sleep. In a recent study, researchers found a connection between patients with sleep apnea and Alzheimer's disease. The research says that patients have sleep apnea may have higher accumulations of an Alzheimer’s disease biomarker called tau in a brain area that helps with memory.
Tau, a protein that forms into tangles, is found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The study involved 288 people aged 65 and older who did not have cognitive impairment. Bed partners were asked whether they had witnessed episodes of stopped breathing during sleep.
Participants had positron emission tomography (PET) brain scans to look for accumulation of tau tangles in the entorhinal cortex area of the brain, an area of the brain in the temporal lobe that is more likely to accumulate tau than some other areas.
This area of the brain helps manage memory, navigation, and perception of time.
The research team was able to identify 43 participants, 15% of the study group whose partners witnessed apneas when they were sleeping.
The team also found those who had apneas had on average 4.5 % higher levels of tau in the entorhinal cortex than those who did not have apneas, after controlling for several other factors that could affect levels of tau in the brain, such as age, sex, education, and cardiovascular risk factors.
“Our research results raise the possibility that sleep apnea affects tau accumulation,” said Carvalho.
“But it is also possible that higher levels of tau in other regions may predispose a person to sleep apnea, so longer studies are now needed to solve this chicken and egg problem,” he said.
