REM sleep study results may help Australians get Parkinson’s disease diagnosed sooner

• in short: Researchers in Tasmania want to know how many people are affected by REM sleep behavior disorder and whether early detection of REM sleep behavior disorder can delay the onset of Parkinson’s disease and dementia. is investigating.
• what’s next? : The sleep study is expected to take two years, and after that, the researchers will continue to monitor changes in the brains of people living in these conditions to glean long-term insights. Become.

Wendy Merrington’s father, uncle and grandmother all had dementia.

She wants early insight into whether she, too, may develop neurodegenerative disease or Parkinson’s disease.

Merrington is one of nearly 3,000 Tasmanians participating in a study linking rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder to dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

“There were a few times when I woke up and thought I had a dream come true,” Merrington said.

“When I was sleeping on the plane, I must have had a dream that I wanted to replace the touchscreen, and when I woke up there was no touchscreen and my neighbors looked at me strangely. So I was actually playing it.”

People with REM sleep behavior disorder usually have vivid dreams of violent acts, such as kicking or hitting.

hope for early diagnosis

Sleep scientist Samantha Bramich and researcher Jane Alti research project.

They hope the findings will help Australians diagnose Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases earlier and delay their onset.

“There has been a lot of research in the area of ​​REM sleep behavior disorder in Europe and America,” said Bramich.

“So this looks like an early symptom or neurodegeneration, but we don’t know if there are lifestyle risk factors that could modify this trajectory and hopefully prevent people from developing these disorders. yeah.

“Our research is trying to understand more about this disease, so that we can improve the lives of people with this disorder and prevent them from developing it later in life.” I hope we can prevent it.”

Bramich said the first step in the study would be to see how many Australians actually have REM sleep behavior disorder.

“We think it’s about 2 percent of the world’s population, but no prevalence studies have been done in Australia or Tasmania,” Bramich said.

“We are also looking at different characteristics and traits that influence why people with this sleep disorder develop other illnesses.

As part of the study, participants were sent scratch cards and sniff cards to inform the researchers about their sense of smell.

They will soon be sent an actigraphy watch to track their sleep, after which participants with high indicators of REM sleep behavior disorder will continue a complete home-based sleep study.

Bramich hopes the sleep study will be completed by the end of 2024, after which researchers will monitor long-term neurological changes in people with the condition.

Research that is difficult to access

Alan Stent was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 15 years ago and more recently with REM sleep behavior disorder.

His wife Sandra is more aware of this disorder than he is.

“Alan doesn’t remember much about having a dream or being spoken to,” Stent said.

“And he flutters. His hands go out, he jumps, he flutters his legs, but then he calms down and goes right back to sleep.”

“Alan gets tired, but I get tired because I am always awake.”

of In Stent’s case, the diagnosis of REM sleep behavior disorder came years after his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.

“But I believe it’s because of Parkinson’s disease now.” [REM sleep behaviour disorder] It happens very often,” Mrs Stent said.

The Stents said they would love to see people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease sooner.

“Alan was not diagnosed and [was] Then I was undermedicated for a long time,” Stent said.

Bramich said Tasmania also needs an easier way to diagnose REM sleep behavior disorder in the future.

He noted that sleep studies are often difficult to access and that other clinicians could readily use a home sleep test similar to the one used in this study to make sleep research testing more accessible. said he wanted.

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