Paulose Jiffin K, Wang Chanung, O'Hara Bruce F, Cassone Vincent M
Department of Biology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40515, USA.
Department of Neurology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA.
Nat Sci Sleep. 2019 Aug 12;11:113-121. doi: 10.2147/NSS.S214423. eCollection 2019.
Sleep disturbances are common maladies associated with human age. Sleep duration is decreased, sleep fragmentation is increased, and the timing of sleep onset and sleep offset is earlier. These disturbances have been associated with several neurodegenerative diseases. Mouse models for human sleep disturbances can be powerful due to the accessibility to neuroscientific and genetic approaches, but these are hampered by the fact that most mouse models employed in sleep research have spontaneous mutations in the biosynthetic pathway(s) regulating the rhythmic production of the pineal hormone melatonin, which has been implicated in human sleep.
The present study employed a non-invasive piezoelectric measure of sleep wake cycles in young, middle-aged and old CBA mice, a strain capable of melatonin biosynthesis, to investigate naturally-occurring changes in sleep and circadian parameters as the result of aging.
The results indicate that young mice sleep less than do middle-aged or aged mice, especially during the night, while the timing of activity onset and acrophase is delayed in aged mice compared to younger mice.
These data point to an effect of aging on the quality and timing of sleep in these mice but also that there are fundamental differences between control of sleep in humans and in laboratory mice.
睡眠障碍是与人类年龄相关的常见病症。睡眠时间缩短，睡眠片段化增加，入睡和起床时间提前。这些障碍与多种神经退行性疾病有关。由于神经科学和遗传学方法的可及性，人类睡眠障碍的小鼠模型可能很强大，但这些模型受到以下事实的阻碍：睡眠研究中使用的大多数小鼠模型在调节松果体激素褪黑素节律性产生的生物合成途径中存在自发突变，而褪黑素与人类睡眠有关。
本研究采用非侵入性压电测量法，对年轻、中年和老年CBA小鼠（一种能够进行褪黑素生物合成的品系）的睡眠-觉醒周期进行测量，以研究衰老导致的睡眠和昼夜节律参数的自然变化。
结果表明，年轻小鼠的睡眠时间比中年或老年小鼠少，尤其是在夜间，而老年小鼠的活动开始时间和峰值相位相对于年轻小鼠有所延迟。
这些数据表明衰老对这些小鼠的睡眠质量和时间有影响，但也表明人类和实验室小鼠的睡眠控制存在根本差异。
