Sleep disturbance is strongly suspected to be early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. disease characterized by severe cognitive decline in patients that usually occurs in people over the age of 60 years.Preliminary conclusions will link with Alzheimer's disease with sleep disorders was obtained investigators who conduct research on mice.
Protein plaques in the brain is the key component that trigger Alzheimer's. In this research, plaques first appeared when mice sleep disorder.
Search early symptom of Alzheimer's is important to find ways of treatment of diseases that can make sufferers forget those things, including members of his own family.
During Alzheimer's patients do not indicate a problem with their memory until his illness suddenly worsened. At that point, some parts of the brain are destroyed so that the disease can not be cured.
The doctors so far can only slow down the disease. Therefore scientists continue to try to find out as early as possible the appearance of the disease.
One of the brain areas studied are in the beta amyloid plaques that form in the brain. Levels of amyloid beta protein will naturally increase and decrease within 24 hours.
However, in Alzheimer's patients, the protein is permanently into plaque.
The research team from the University of Washington showed that rats who often stay up for 40-minute nap. However, when it began to form plaques in their brains, reduced her hours to 30 minutes.
"If a sleep disorder is an early sign of Alzheimer's disease in humans, then the change could make it easier for doctors to detect it as early as possible," said Holtzman Prof.David conducting research.
Yet what happens in mice may not be the same in humans. Because it's in the near future scientists will conduct research on humans.
Earlier also there is some research that links between changes in sleep patterns with a reduced ability to think.