Sleep disorders and daytime sleepiness in Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Patients with Parkinson's disease commonly have sleep disturbances that significantly alter quality of life but are often underrecognized. Awareness of the importance of these sleep disorders has been growing, and more research is being conducted. Patients with Parkinson's disease have difficulties that not only include falling asleep and staying asleep but also include excessive daytime sleepiness and abnormal events during sleep. These sleep disturbances are often multifactorial in nature, resulting from degeneration of the cortical sleep centers to effects of medications taken to treat the motor symptoms associated with Parkinson's disease. A thorough evaluation should be performed to assess for the presence of sleep disturbances and daytime sleepiness. Many therapeutic strategies can be used to treat sleepiness and sleep disturbances in Parkinson's disease to improve the patient's overall health, psychological well-being, and quality of life.

Effects of various factors on sleep disorders and quality of life in Parkinson’s disease

“…The H&Y stage of the disease was significantly positively associated with the PDQ-8, which was expected, given that the progression of the disease significantly decreases QoL. This is also in accordance with previous studies which stated that the incidence of SD increases with the progression of PD [21,22].…”

“…These results confirmed the assumption that PD significantly affects all points related to the quality of sleep, which are more pronounced as the disease progresses. Given that one-third of the human lifespan is spent in sleep, it is clear that QoL directly depends on the quality of sleep [20,21]. The average duration of PD in our study group was 6 years, and the longer duration significantly positively correlated with the PSQI, ESS and PDQ-8 scores, but negatively with the PDSS score.…”

“…In addition to sleep disorders, patients with PD often complain of daytime sleepiness, and studies showed that daytime sleepiness occurs in most patients with PD [9,21]. These symptoms occur not only as consecutive daytime sleepiness after disturbed night sleeping but also because of factors related to the disease and treatment, and they have a major influence on the QoL of patients with PD, which should certainly be taken into consideration in choosing therapeutic treatment for PD [27].…”

The clinical symptoms of Parkinson's disease

“…They include REM behaviour sleep disorder where patients act out their dreams, thrash and kick around in the night while dreaming. The frequency in clinically manifested PD has been reported as 27–32% (Monderer and Thorpy ), but symptoms may appear years or decades before the motor symptoms appear (Hickey et al . ).…”

Neurologic Aspects of Sleep Medicine

“…140 Common symptoms include difficulty in falling asleep and staying asleep, abnormal movements in sleep, and EDS. 140 Common symptoms include difficulty in falling asleep and staying asleep, abnormal movements in sleep, and EDS.…”