[Polysomnographic studies on sleep in adult borderline personality disorder]

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) represents 2% of the general population, 10% of outpatient psychiatry facilities, 20% of inpatients and nearly 41% of patients seen in Emergency Room for attempted suicide. Also, 10% complete suicide and 64-66% have comorbid substance dependence. In addition, several studies report sleep subjective complaints in patients with BPD, and research has explored objective sleep disturbances.

To examine the results of previous studies in polysomnography in BPD to better characterize the objective sleep disturbances in this population.

A review of the literature on MedLine and PsycINFO using the term "borderline personality disorder", "sleep" and "polysomnography" allowed the review of 15 original articles on sleep assessed by PSG in subjects adults with BPD, published between 1980 and may 2010.

Compared with healthy subjects, a decreased onset delay of rapid eye movements (REM) sleep and an increased REM density have been observed in BPD. In addition BPD shares with major depression the following disturbances: increase in onset latency, decreased total sleep time and efficiency.

Differences between studies regarding sex, age, mood state at the time of the study and psychiatric comorbidity influence the results, which explains the disparity in findings.

There are objective disturbances associated with BPD according to polysomnographic studies.