Differential effects of age on quality of sleep and depression in patients receiving maintenance haemodialysis.

BACKGROUND

Poor quality of sleep and depression are common and highly associated with each other in patients on haemodialysis. We aimed to investigate whether they share common risk factors and how age may influence their development.

METHODS

Cross-sectional observation study on 120 haemodialysis patients with quality of sleep and depression assessed by Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Taiwanese Depression Questionnaire (TDQ), respectively.

RESULTS

The prevalence of poor quality of sleep and depression was 92.5% and 43.3%, respectively. PSQI scores were associated with age, gender, education and monthly income while TDQ scores were associated with low serum creatinine and albumin levels. Elderly patients at ages older than 65 had the highest average PSQI score (12.26 ± 4.35) than the young group at age 20-44 (8.25 ± 4.39) (P = 0.028) but the average TDQ scores were similar across three age groups. The proportion of those who had high PSQI scores was significantly higher in the elderly group (54.4%, P = 0.017) and the 44-65-years group (51.9%, P = 0.028) than the young group (16.7%). The proportion of those who reported normal quality of sleep was much lower in the elderly group (0.0%) than the other two groups (25.0%, P < 0.001 and 11.7%, P < 0.01). The proportions of those who had different ranges of TDQ scores did not show such a pattern of strong age dependence.

CONCLUSIONS

Poor quality of sleep in haemodialysis patients is associated with socio-economic factors while depression is more related to biochemistry indicators. A majority of older patients suffer very poor quality of sleep while depression appears equally severe and common across different age groups.