Alzheimer’s disease has been linked to sleep deprivation in a new study.
Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis analyzed data from 250 people and found that the regular highs and lows of amyloid beta levels in the brain’s surrounding fluid begins to flatten in older adults.
“In healthy people, levels of amyloid beta drop to their lowest point about six hours after sleep, and return to their highest point six hours after maximum wakefulness,” said Randall Bateman, MD, who worked on the study, as quoted by the Pakistan Observer.
“We’ve known for some time that significant sleep deprivation has negative effects on cognitive function comparable to that of alcohol intoxication,” said Stephen Duntley, MD, director of the Centre, as quoted by PO. “But it’s recently become apparent that prolonged sleep disruption and deprivation can actually play an important role in pathological processes that underlie diseases.”
Bateman says that funding is lacking in research for Alzheimer’s.
“We focus on it because there’s simply not very good treatment or diagnoses for Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is a fairly neglected disease,” Bateman said, as quoted by The Inquisitr. “It costs this country more than a hundred billion dollars a year, yet we invest less than one billion dollars a year into that. There’s a particularly difficult problem right now with funding at the NIH [National Institute of Health], the government, as well as with the macroeconomic situation of the economy being down, which has severely affected pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs.”
