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Clinical InvestigationsSleep-Disordered Breathing in the Healthy Elderly: Clinically Significant?
Section snippets
Subjects
Potential subjects were recruited from a variety of sources, including newspaper advertisements, notices in community centers, and a volunteer pool maintained by the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, a multidisciplinary aging center based at the University of Kentucky. Subjects were required to be between 50 and 80 years of age; to be in good health; to have no history of neurologic, pulmonary, or psychiatric disease; to be without sleep complaints apart from normal age-related changes (eg, not
RESULTS
Demographic characteristics of the 92 subjects appear in Table 1. There were 44 men and 48 women, all of whom were white. Based on mean education levels, these subjects were from an above-average socioeconomic group. Overall, the subjects had a mean age of about 64 years and a mean weight of about 73.35 kg.
Table 2 presents data on SDB indices from the sample. The average AHI for this group was 2.7, and the average number of 4 percent desaturations was about 44. Fourteen subjects (15 percent)
DISCUSSION
The major finding of this study was the lack of relationship between SDB indices and comprehensive measures of daytime functioning. These results confirm previous findings from a similar protocol,16 as well as extend the conclusions reached by other recent studies indicating a lack of effect of SDB in healthy elderly persons assessed for various subjective and objective aspects of daytime functioning.7, 8 One important implication of the present results is that SDB occurring in an otherwise
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We are grateful to Lynn Harbison for administrative assistance and secretarial support.
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2022, Handbook of Clinical NeurologyCitation Excerpt :The ensuing marked decreases in airflow may be erroneously scored as an apnea in patients with severe diaphragm dysfunction. The prevalence of central sleep apnea increases with age, particularly in older adults (Phillips et al., 1989; Ancoli-Israel et al., 1991; Phillips et al., 1992). This may be attributable to sleep fragmentation and sleep stage oscillations which worsen with age.
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2020, Neurobiology of DiseaseCitation Excerpt :Cross-sectional studies investigating middle age and older adults with OSA have demonstrated cognitive impairments in executive function (Bawden et al., 2011; Mathieu et al., 2008; Quan et al., 2006; Hrubos-Strom et al., 2012; Blackwell et al., 2011; Nikodemova et al., 2013; Salorio et al., 2002; Spira et al., 2008; Yesavage et al., 1985; Sharma et al., 2010), attention (Bawden et al., 2011; Mathieu et al., 2008; Naegele et al., 1995; Quan et al., 2006; Yesavage et al., 1985), reaction time and psychomotor vigilance testing (PVT) (Sharma et al., 2010; Kim et al., 2007; Alchanatis et al., 2008) and memory (Bawden et al., 2011; Kloepfer et al., 2009; Naëgelé et al., 2006; Nikodemova et al., 2013; Salorio et al., 2002; Sharma et al., 2010; Ju et al., 2012; Yesavage et al., 1985; Berry et al., 1990). In contrast other groups have found no significant association between OSA and measures of executive function, attention or memory (Hayward et al., 1992; Phillips et al., 1992; Foley et al., 2003; Sforza et al., 2010). Proposed explanatory mechanisms for findings relating OSA to cognitive impairment include daytime sleepiness from sleep fragmentation and/or neurovascular damage as a result of intermittent hypoxia, although the contributions of each are not well established (Cedernaes et al., 2017).
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Supported by the American Lung Association of Kentucky (D.T.R.B.), National Institutes of Health Heart, Lung and Blood Division (B.A.P), National Institutes of Health Clinical Research Center Grant, Sanders-Brown Center on Aging (D.T.R.B.), and the National Institute on Aging—Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (F.A.S.).