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Disruption of the sleep-wake cycle is a well-recognized symptom of Alzheimer's disease, but recent research suggests that a disorganized biological clock could also be a key factor in neurodegenerative disease.
An exploration of the role of circadian rhythm in the development of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia is one of the many discoveries that will be presented this week at Neuroscience 2018, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in the San Diego Convention Center.
Monday morning, Brian Lananna, a researcher at the University of Washington in St. Louis, presented preliminary results that show how to press the mute button circadian rhythms at the cellular level can damage neurons, the brain cells responsible for cognition human.
Working in petri dishes and mice, the researchers have disabled the astrocyte genes, star – shaped cells that support neurons, preventing them from producing an essential protein that, when it 's unclear. is dried up, resulted in a damaging outbreak of ignition.
These results raise an intriguing question: is an off-the-wall circadian rhythm the cause of Alzheimer's disease?
Lananna is probably not saying. Many hypotheses involve the accumulation of other proteins that, over time, lead to devastating levels of memory loss.
But it is possible, says Lananna, that a disrupted biological clock accelerates a process already under way.
"There is a lot of suggestive evidence, even though it is not yet conclusive, that inflammation can be a determining factor in Alzheimer's disease," said Lananna. one already begins to develop Alzheimer's disease, a person on the brink or accelerate progression. "
Other trials will look more closely at key protein levels in patients with Alzheimer's disease, comparing the results with those who do not suffer from the disease. In the end, more in-depth studies could lead to drugs that could be used to compensate for the desynchronization of circadian rhythms.
The findings support an increasing body of evidence that disturbances of circadian rhythms have serious consequences. Other studies have linked the delay of the biological clock to a host of health effects from heart disease to premature death.
Although this science continues to evolve, researchers have increasingly been warning the public that getting enough sleep, in sync with normal light-dark habits in nature, would likely have a protective effect.
A major effort in recent years has been to limit the time spent in night screens, which, according to some studies, can interfere with normal sleep patterns.
Quality of sleep is another area of ongoing research.
Deep sleep has generally been shown to be the most beneficial type of sleep, and several articles from Neuroscience 2018 have confirmed this idea.
The Walter Reed Army Research Institute studied soldiers who suffered concussions, concluding that this type of trauma correlated with a significant reduction in the amount of deep sleep that each participant received each night. A study by Walter Reed has subjected previously shocked soldiers to a 40-hour sleep deprivation to determine whether or not their performance was compromised.
Such a long stretch without sleep, says Cpt. Allison Brager, a Walter Reed researcher, was designed to simulate modern warfare when many soldiers must operate in the dark and missions can last well beyond 24 hours.
"We're very proud of having the night, and being sleep deprived and changing your sleep patterns to get the upper hand on yourself," Brager said.
The results of the study showed that soldiers who had recently suffered a concussion were about 100 milliseconds slower after 40 hours of sleep deprivation than those who had not suffered a concussion. While a difference of less than one second in response times may seem like little to a civilian, Brager, who said she was speaking for herself and not for the US military, said that the reduction in time could be a decisive factor in combat.
"Under real fire, it can mean the difference between life and death," said Brager.
It has also been shown that lack of deep sleep affects emotional regulation, according to findings presented by Eti Ben Simon of the Center for the Science of Human Sleep at the University of Berkeley.
Researchers at the center studied 18 healthy participants who were assessed before and after an eight-hour evening, in which half slept and half were sleep-deprived. For those who did not sleep deeply, anxiety increased significantly and brain imaging showed greater activity in the areas of the brain generating emotions as well as in "pre-frontal" areas that suppressed normally anxiety.
Sleeping eight full hours of sleep each night seems like a good anti-anxiety medication.
"If we are chronically deprived of sleep and if you continue to lose sleep, this could make us aware of higher levels of anxiety and the development of an anxiety disorder," Ben Simon said.
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Twitter: @paulsisson
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