Home-Based Sleep Sensor Measurements in an Older Australian Population: Before and during a Pandemic

Abstract

Older adults are susceptible to poor night-time sleep, characterized by short sleep duration and high sleep disruptions (i.e., more frequent and longer awakenings). This study aimed to longitudinally and objectively assess the changes in sleep patterns of older Australians during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. A non-invasive mattress-based device, known as the EMFIT QS, was used to continuously monitor sleep in 31 older adults with an average age of 84 years old before (November 2019–February 2020) and during (March–May 2020) the COVID-19, a disease caused by a form of coronavirus, lockdown. Total sleep time, sleep onset latency, wake after sleep onset, sleep efficiency, time to bed, and time out of bed were measured across these two periods. Overall, there was no significant change in total sleep time; however, women had a significant increase in total sleep time (36 min), with a more than 30-min earlier bedtime. There was also no increase in wake after sleep onset and sleep onset latency. Sleep efficiency remained stable across the pandemic time course between 84–85%. While this sample size is small, these data provide reassurance that objective sleep measurement did not deteriorate through the pandemic in older community-dwelling Australians.

Contactless and longitudinal monitoring of nocturnal sleep and daytime naps in older men and women: a digital health technology evaluation study

“…Previous longitudinal studies have employed CSTs for at-home monitoring of sleep behavior in older adult populations [ 18 , 32–35 ] ( Supplementary Caption 1 ). While these studies have demonstrated the value and scalability of CSTs for studying sleep behavior under various conditions such as COVID-19, PLWD, and health deteriorations, they did not use a standard sleep technology such as actigraphy combined with sleep diary information for evaluating the validity of the contactless sleep monitoring data.…”

“…Many sleep-stage detection pipelines will have been developed based on data obtained in healthy people under controlled laboratory conditions. Some studies have evaluated individual CSTs in older adults, but these studies have been limited to either lab or home settings with assessment limited to simple bed presence or sleep summary assessments of nocturnal sleep only [ 18–24 ].…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing research comparing multiple CSTs to the current standard of longitudinal sleep assessment at home, that is, actigraphy combined with sleep diary information, across multiple sleep monitoring domains in older adults [ 15 , 16 , 18–22 ]. The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the 24-hour sleep assessment capability of two under-mattress CSTs and automated actigraphy analysis in comparison to sleep-diary-assisted actigraphy at home in a population of community-dwelling older adults with a health status that is somewhat representative of the older population.…”

Global burden of sleep disturbances among older adults and the disparities by geographical regions and pandemic periods

“…Then, we included four different sleep statuses: 1) mean sleep duration (eight studies) ( Alqurashi et al, 2022 ; Ataka, Kimura, Eguchi, & Matsubara, 2022 ; Garcia Carlini et al, 2023 ; Ikeda et al, 2022 ; Kholghi et al, 2021 ; Makizako et al, 2021 ; Mistry et al, 2021 ; Wielgoszewska et al, 2022 ); 2) mean sleep efficiency (three studies) ( Ataka et al, 2022 ; Garcia Carlini et al, 2023 ; Kholghi et al, 2021 ); 3) mean sleep quality scores (four studies) ( Chin et al, 2022 ; Garcia Carlini et al, 2023 ; Hausman et al, 2022 ; Tracy et al, 2022 ); 4) mean ISI scores (three studies) ( Dale et al, 2021 ; Gezgin Yazici & Ökten, 2022 ; Pieh et al, 2021 ).…”

COVID-19 pandemic is associated with increased sleep disturbances and mental health symptoms but not help-seeking: a cross-sectional nation-wide study

“…Several studies investigated sleep problems and evaluated whether and how sleep quality was affected during the 2020-2021 period in several countries [15][16][17][18][19] . These studies identifying effects either of the pandemic restrictions (e.g., stay-at-home orders) or the isolation or quarantine on sleep schedules/sleep quality in children, adolescents, adults, and patients with comorbidities [20][21][22][23][24] .…”