Aussie study confirms sleep apnoea and Alzheimer’s link
The research is the first to find a connection between the two disorders and opens up new directions for researche
A link between sleep apnoea and Alzheimer’s disease has been confirmed after researchers uncovered identical signs of brain plaque in both conditions.
The Australian and Icelandic study is the first to find Alzheimer’s-like amyloid plaques in the brains of people with clinically-verified obstructive sleep apnoea.
The researchers investigated the extent of Alzheimer’s-like indicators in autopsy tissue of the hippocampus of 34 people and the brainstems of 24 people with obstructive sleep apnoea.
Led by RMIT University in Melbourne, the findings in Sleep showed these plaques start in the same place and spread in the same way in the brains of people with obstructive sleep apnoea, just like those in people with Alzheimer’s.
