People suffering from sleep apnea are twice as likely to develop dementia, according to a new study.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed for the first time what sleep specialists have long suspected but hadn't proved: Sleep apnea (aka sleep-disordered breathing) can deprive the brain and other organs of the oxygen they need and, may, over time, trigger declines in cognitive ability.
"This is the first study to show that sleep apnea may lead to cognitive impairment," study leader Dr. Kristine Yaffe said in a statement. "It suggests that there is a biological connection between sleep and cognition and also suggests that treatment of sleep apnea might help prevent or delay the onset of dementia in older adults."
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In people with sleep apnea, the airways leading from the lungs to the nose and mouth collapse as the individuals sleep, interfering with the ability to inhale. People with sleep apnea often snore and are wakened many times a night for tiny fragments of time as they gasp for air. The common sleep disorder has also been associated with hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
While previous research had found an association between sleep apnea and dementia, those studies weren't structured to follow the impact of sleep apnea on people who had normal cognitive abilities at the onset, researchers said.
The researchers studied 298 women over the age of 65 with no signs of dementia or measurable cognitive impairments, and reevaluated them some five years later. They found about one-third of all the women developed dementia or mild cognitive impairment, and that those with sleep apnea were almost twice as likely to become cognitively impaired.
The findings suggest that the key factor leading to diminished cognition was oxygen deprivation. Women who had frequent episodes of low oxygen or spent a large portion of their sleep time in a state of hypoxia were more likely to develop cognitive impairment, researchers said. By contrast, no independent connection was seen between dementia and the number of times patients were awakened in their struggle to breathe.
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