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MONDAY, March 4, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Older adults who are witnessed to have sleep apnea have increased accumulations of tau in the entorhinal cortex (ERC), according to a study scheduled for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, to be held from May 4 to 10 in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
Diego Carvalho, M.D., from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues identified 288 participants aged \u226565 years who did not have cognitive impairment and performed tau-positron emission tomography (PET) scans and amyloid PET scans. Participants’ bed partners completed a questionnaire assessing whether they had witnessed apneas during sleep. The authors examined the association between ERC tau and witness apneas while controlling for potentially confounding variables.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that 43 participants (15 percent) had witnessed apneas during sleep. There was a significant association for witnessed apneas with tau in the ERC. After controlling for multiple confounders, the model estimated a 0.049 elevation in the ERC tau standardized uptake value ratio.<\/p>\n
“Our research results raise the possibility that sleep apnea affects tau accumulation,” Carvalho said in a statement. “But it’s 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.”<\/p>\n
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