Benson K L, King R, Gordon D, Silva J A, Zarcone V P
Department of Psychiatry, VA Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA 94304.
J Affect Disord. 1990 Apr;18(4):267-73. doi: 10.1016/0165-0327(90)90078-m.
Sleep patterns of borderline patients with and without a history of affective disorder were compared to each other and to normal reference data. The three groups could not be distinguished in terms of REM latency because a wide spread of values was seen within each group. Borderlines were different from normal controls in other aspects of sleep architecture; they had less total sleep, more stage 1 sleep, and less stage 4 sleep. If one assumes that REM latency is a biological marker for mood disorder, then our results do not support the hypothesis that borderline personality disorder is a variant of affective illness. However, other data suggest that REM latency should not be used to validate the presence of affective illness.
