Study on the correlation between sleep disturbances and cognitive impairment-associated cerebral small vascular disease in elderly people / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the clinical characteristics and correlation of sleep disturbances(SD)with cognitive impairment-associated cerebral small vascular disease(CSVD-CI)in elderly patients.Methods:In this cross-sectional study, 261 elderly CSVD-CI patients admitted to the Department of Neurology, Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University between December 2019 and December 2021 were continuously enrolled.The Pittsburgh Sleep Index Scale(PSQI)was used to evaluate the overall sleep quality.Those with a PSQI score ≥7 was assigned to the CSVD-CI with sleep disturbances(CSVD-CI-SD)group, while those with a PSQI score <7 was assigned to the CSVD-CI without SD(CSVD-CI-NSD)group.The Montreal Cognitive Assessment(MoCA)was used to evaluate the cognitive function of patients with CSVD-CI, and scores on the overall cognitive function and various cognitive domains were compared between the CSVD-CI-SD group and the CSVD-CI-NSD group.Results:There were no significant differences between the CSVD-CI-SD group and the CSVD-CI-NSD group in sex ratio, age, education level and comorbidities( P>0.05). Compared with the CSVD-CI-NSD group, patients in the CSVD-CI-SD group took longer to fall asleep, had worse sleep efficiency, a shorter sleep duration, more obvious SD at night, worse sleep quality, more use of sleeping drugs, and more obvious daytime dysfunction(all P<0.05). Compared with the CSVD-CI-NSD group, the total MoCA score, attention score and orientation score in the CSVD-CI-SD group were significantly decreased( P<0.01). Correlation analysis results showed that the total MoCA score and attention in the CSVD-CI-SD group were negatively correlated with SD at night( r=-0.198, r=-0.115, P<0.05 for both), and orientation was negatively correlated with sleep quality( r=-0.170, P<0.05). Conclusions:The prevalence of SD is high in CSVD-CI patients, with CSVD-CI-SD patients showing more obvious overall cognitive, attention and orientation impairment in MoCA.Additionally, the total MoCA score and attention are negatively correlated with nighttime SD, and orientation is negatively correlated with sleep quality in CSVD-CI-SD patients.