Sleep structure assessed by objective measurement in patients with mild cognitive impairment: A meta-analysis

A meta-analysis was used to explore the characteristic changes in objective sleep structure of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) compared with cognitively healthy older adults.

PubMed, EMBAS, Cochrane Library, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched until November 2023. A literature quality evaluation was performed according to the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale, and a meta-analysis was performed by RevMan 5.3 software.

Fifteen studies with 771 participants were finally included. Compared with normal control groups, patients with MCI had a decreased total sleep time by 34.44 min, reduction in sleep efficiency by 7.96 %, increased waking after sleep onset by 19.61 min, and increased sleep latency by 6.97 min. Ten included studies showed that the patients with MCI had increased N1 sleep by 2.72 % and decreased N3 sleep by 0.78 %; however, there was no significant difference between the MCI and control groups in percentage of N2 sleep. Moreover, Twelve included studies reported the MCI groups had shorter REM sleep of 2.69 %.

Our results provide evidence of abnormal sleep architecture in patients with MCI. As a "plastic state," abnormal sleep architecture may be a promising therapeutic target for slowing cognitive decline and dementia prevention.