Polysomnographic (PSG) Characteristics of Sleep Behaviour in Parkinson's Disease: A Brief Report

Polysomnography (PSG) is widely used for verifying sleep disruption in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the determination of impacted PSG parameters specific to PD is complicated by the heterogeneity of study populations, control groups, as well as scoring systems. This brief report aims to account for these variables by comparing PSG results from a well-defined group of people with mild to moderate PD (n = 57) to a large, normative age and gender-matched PSG dataset. We show that every participant with PD had abnormalities in the PSG macrostructure parameters. There were heterogenous and bidirectional changes in the sleep architecture between patients, even when minimising for effects of age, gender, and scoring method. A generalised inference concerning the manifestation of common PSG sleep macrostructure changes presenting in PD cannot be made. The categorisation of sleep structure in PD should recognise its heterogeneity and bidirectionality and involve extended analysis of sleep microstructure.