Researchers are starting to find patterns in how we sleep that could point to early signs of dementia or Parkinson’s disease.
There are some obvious signs that your loved one could be showing early signs of dementia, which affects almost seven million people in the US.
The common signs include being unable to learn new tasks, struggling to stay focussed, finding it hard to contribute in conversations, mistaking things for other objects and/or getting unusually emotional or afraid.
However, now scientists have recently linked a certain sleep disorder as a sign these progressive neurological conditions could be taking hold in almost ‘all cases’, experts have said.
A complicated sleep condition
The problem is, the unique sleep disorder is extremely difficult to diagnose.
Medical professionals could easily confuse it with another condition or sufferers might not even be aware that they’re doing it in the first place. After all, you are asleep when it happens.
What are the tell-tale signs?
The research reveals people who have ‘abnormal movements’, such as talking, shouting, laughing, swearing, moving and thrashing about while in their sleep, could have REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD).
And the most obvious sign of RBD is ‘acting out’ dreams, which means physically moving or talking while asleep.
In some cases, thrashing while asleep can be so vigorous that RBD patients could hurt themselves or their partners.
They might also wake up feeling groggy the next morning and could be more susceptible to falling asleep throughout the day.
The condition affects more than one million people in the US and around 80 million people worldwide and, according to Mount Sinai scientists, is an early sign of Parkinson’s disease or dementia ‘in nearly all cases’.
The link between RBD and dementia
Researchers have drawn the link because those who have RBD have an increased inflammation in the brain where dopamine is produced. Parkinson’s and dementia patients also have a diminished supply of the chemical because the nerve cells that produce it have died.
In a bid to catch the conditions early, US scientists have turned to the help of artificial intelligence to analyse clinical sleep tests and improve diagnoses of RBD, as well as identify the patients at higher risk of losing cognitive function.
The team replicated and expanded the use of automated machine learning analysis of movements during sleep based on prior research carried out by the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria.
They used a video-polysomnogram, a type of sleep-monitoring technology, to determine an RBD diagnosis which researchers said had an accuracy rate of 92 percent.
Dr Emmanuel During, an associate professor of neurology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said: “This automated approach could be integrated into clinical workflow during the interpretation of sleep tests to enhance and facilitate diagnosis, and avoid missed diagnoses.
“This method could also be used to inform treatment decisions based on the severity of movements displayed during the sleep tests and, ultimately, help doctors personalize care plans for individual patients.”
