Objective: To assess month of the year related changes in  polysomnography (PSG) data in patients with alpha-synucleinopathies.

Background: Season of the year related changes in sleep structure. have been described in samples formed by patients with non-neurological sleep disorders, but there is no data regarding alpha-synucleinopathies.

Method: We collected PSG data from all Parkinson’s Disease (PD), Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) and isolated REM sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) patients attending a sleep lab in Lisbon, Portugal between January 2012 and December 2022. Patients were classified according to the month of the year PSG was performed and compared with a control patient with sleep disorder but no evidence of other neurological disorder, matched for sex, age group and PSG month. The influence of month in PSG data was assessed within each group, with mixed linear regression analysis, with month of the year as factor, PSG parameter as a dependent variable, age and gender as co-variates.  Analysis of the interaction between PSG parameters and the term diagnosis*time was performed to test differences in PSG variation between groups.

Results: Subjects were 118 patients (41 females) with  alpha-synucleinopathies  (64 PD, 30 LBD, 24 iRBD). The control group was formed by patients with sleep breathing disorders (75),  insomnia (22),  restless legs syndrome/periodic limb movements of sleep (17) and other other sleep disorders (4). Mean age was 71,26 ± 9,73 and 69.36 ± 9.48, respectively, p=0.126. In alpha-synucleinopathies, month of the year showed significant interaction with N2 and N3 stage sleep percentage (F=2.232, p=0.018 and F=2.531, p=0.007, respectively) and N3 time (F=2.132, p=0.024). In the control group, there were significant interactions regarding Total Sleep Time (F=2.530, p =0.007), Sleep Efficiency (F=3.311, p= 0.001), N3 time (F=2.222, p=0.018) and Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI) (F=2.000, p=0.035). Regarding the term diagnosis*group, there were significant interactions regarding sleep efficiency (F=2.079, p=0.023) and AHI (F=1.880, p=0.043).

Conclusion: Seasonality had a larger impact in Non-REM sleep in alpha-synucleinopathies,  and  in sleep total time, sleep efficiency and the severity of sleep disordered breathing in the control group. A different origin of sleep disturbances in the two groups could explain the differences in season related variation.

« Back to 2023 International Congress

MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/sleep-seasonality-in-alpha-synucleinopathies-a-comparative-study-with-non-neurological-sleep-disorder-patients/