Centre for Policy on Ageing



Sleep duration during the 24-hour day is associated with the severity of dementia in nursing home patients
Author(s)	Arne Fetveit, Bjorn Bjorvatn
Journal title	International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 21, no 10, October 2006
Pages	pp 945-950
Source	http://www.interscience.wiley.com
Keywords	Dementia ; Sleep behaviour ; Time duration ; Residents [care homes] ; Correlation ; Norway.
Annotation	In a cross-sectional study of 31 nursing home patients in Norway aged 72-76 (mean age 86.1) with varying degrees of dementia, sleep was measured with actigraphy over 14 consecutive days; individual bed and rising times were registered by nursing home staff. Sleep was extremely fragmented, with frequent wake bouts during nighttime and frequent naps during daytime. Over a 24 hour period, patients spent nearly 13 hours asleep, distributed as more than 9 hours at night and more than 3 hours of daytime sleep. Sleep duration during the 24 hour day was positively correlated with the severity of dementia. This is in contrast with total sleep time seen in healthy older people, which shows a gradual decline with age. Changes in sleep patterns in dementia could be explained by co-morbid and environmental factors, as well as unknown pathological changes related to dementing disease. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-061213204 A
Classmark	EA: CG: 4N: KX: 49: 76N
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.