Objective sleep measures between patients with Parkinson's disease and community-based older adults

Previous studies comparing objective sleep measures between patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and control participants were limited by their small sample size. The purpose of this study was to compare objective sleep measures between large-scale cohorts of PD outpatients and community-based older adults.

In this cross-sectional study, we measured sleep parameters for 157 PD patients using an actigraph on the non-dominant wrist for six consecutive nights (95 Hoehn-Yahr stage I/II; 62 Hoehn-Yahr stage III-V). Moreover, two consecutive nights of actigraphy were performed on 1101 community-based control participants aged ≥60 years.

In multivariable analysis, sleep efficiency (SE) was significantly lower in patients with late-stage PD by 17.5% [95% confidence interval: 15.3%-19.7%] and early-stage PD by 9.4% [7.6%-11.1%] compared to the controls (67.1% and 75.3% vs. 84.6%, respectively). Similar results were observed for wake after sleep onset (WASO) and fragmentation index (FI). Total sleep time and sleep onset latency (SOL) were significantly shorter in patients with late- and early-stage PD stage compared to the controls. Among PD patients, significant association trends between advancement of individual Hoehn-Yahr stages and worsened sleep measures of SE, WASO, and FI were observed independently of age, gender, levodopa equivalent dose, and motor function parameter.

This study demonstrated significant and quantitative differences in objective sleep quality and quantity between PD patients and control participants. Furthermore, with advancement of disease stages, objectively measured sleep quality worsened in PD patients.