Factors Associated with Poor Sleep in Older Adults with Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

Sleep problems are prevalent in individuals with MS. Individuals who had clinically significant levels of anxiety were roughly two times more likely to have trouble sleeping when compared to individuals without anxiety. Efforts should focus on early identification and effective interventions for poor sleep in individuals living with MS.

Sleep Abnormalities in Multiple Sclerosis

“…In addition other articles related to Health and Sleep Physiology were included to support our general arguments. Articles were reviewed by two independent reviewers and a total of 37 articles were selected for inclusion in the present review [4,14,16,17,18,19,22,23,24,25,26,29,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,41,42,43,49,50,51,53,55,56,61,62,63,64,66,67,70].…”

“…Sleep abnormalities are very common among patients diagnosed with MS and still remain under-recognized and inadequately addressed. Prevalence is estimated between 42-65%, whilst the wide range of reported rates mainly due to different methodological approaches and type of disorders; sleep abnormalities have been reported to be four times higher in MS compared to healthy populations [16][17][18]exceeding by far rates for other chronically disease patients. Poor sleep quality could have an adverse impact on patients' health and quality of life contributing even further to the overall disease burden [3,14].The nature of sleep abnormalities has multifactorial aetiologies and is significantly dependent on illness severity and intrusiveness [19].…”

Sleep disorders in multiple sclerosis: present-day knowledge and future perspectives

“…4,5 Importantly, sleep disturbances are commonly reported by MS patients where they could occur approximately four times more than in the general population. 1,6 Sleep disturbances could be either due to co-morbid sleep disorders or secondary to several factors that frequently happen in MS. To start, regarding comorbid sleep disorders, the occurrence of restless leg syndrome has been found to be 5.4 times greater in MS patients compared to the general public and seems to arise from hypothalamic and cervical spine lesions. 1 Sleep apnea is another condition that may be related to brainstem lesions or medication-induced hypotonia of pharyngeal muscles.…”

“…9 Moreover, compared to patients without anxiety, those with anxiety were about two times more prone to experience sleep troubles. 6 In addition to these comorbidities, and despite the little available evidence, some disease modifying treatments (i.e. interferon-beta) and symptomatic drugs may affect sleep quality.…”

“…In conclusion, the available data hint toward a relatively high prevalence of sleep disturbances in MS patients. Admitting the drastic impact of sleep disturbance on physical and mental well-being, 6 a systematic screening for sleep disorders in daily clinical practice should be implemented by adapting short quantitative assessment tools such as Epworth Sleepiness Scale. 1 This would allow a proper referral of concerned patients to sleep specialists for further investigations (e.g.…”