Objective: To clarify whether sleep disturbance would alter the patterns of structural and functional networks underlying cognitive dysfunction in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Background: Ample evidence has suggested that sleep disturbance may have a detrimental impact on neurodegenerative process responsible for cognitive performance in general population or patients with Alzheimer’s disease. However, it remains unclear whether poor sleep contributes to cortical or subcortical structural changes underlying cognitive impairment in patients with PD.

Methods: Among the 180 patients with non-demented PD in our cohort, 45 patients were classified as the group with sleep disturbance according to the 5-item Scales for Outcomes in Parkinson’s disease-nighttime scale. Based on propensity scores, another 45 PD patients without sleep disturbance were matched to this group. We performed a comparative analysis of cortical thickness, diffusion tensor imaging-based white matter integrity, resting-state functional connectivity, and cognitive performance between PD patients with and without sleep disturbance.

Results: PD patients with sleep disturbance showed poorer performance in attention and working memory, and a tendency towards a lower score in frontal executive function relative to those without sleep disturbance. The PD with sleep disturbance group exhibited widespread white matter disintegration compared with the PD without sleep disturbance group (figure 1), although there were no significant differences in cortical thickness between the PD subgroups. On functional network analysis, PD patients with sleep disturbance exhibited less severely decreased cortical functional connectivity within the default mode network, central executive network, and dorsal attention network when compared with those without sleep disturbance (figure 2).

Conclusions: The present study suggests that sleep disturbance in PD patients could be associated with white matter and functional network alterations in conjunction with cognitive impairment.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/sleep-disturbance-may-alter-white-matter-and-resting-state-functional-connectivities-in-parkinsons-disease/