CHU de Besançon, Service de Gériatrie, Besançon, F-25000, France.
Université de Franche-Comté, UMR INSERM 1322 LINC, Besançon, F-25000, France.
BMC Geriatr. 2024 Sep 20;24(1):778. doi: 10.1186/s12877-024-05364-9.
Sleep and its architecture are affected and changing through the whole lifespan. We know main modifications of the macro-architecture with a shorter sleep, occurring earlier and being more fragmented. We have been studying sleep micro-architecture through its pathological modification in sleep, psychiatric or neurocognitive disorders whereas we are still unable to say if the sleep micro-architecture of an old and very old person is rather normal, under physiological changes, or a concern for a future disorder to appear. We wanted to evaluate age-related changes in sleep spindle characteristics in individuals over 75 years of age compared with younger individuals.
This was an exploratory study based on retrospective and comparative laboratory-based polysomnography data registered in the normal care routine for people over 75 years of age compared to people aged 65-74 years. We were studying their sleep spindle characteristics (localization, density, frequency, amplitude, and duration) in the N2 and N3 sleep stages. ANOVA and ANCOVA using age, sex and OSA were applied.
We included 36 participants aged > 75 years and 57 participants aged between 65 and 74 years. An OSA diagnosis was most common in both groups. Older adults receive more medication to modify their sleep. Spindle localization becomes more central after 75 years of age. Changes in the other sleep spindle characteristics between the N2 and N3 sleep stages and between the slow and fast spindles were conformed to literature data, but age was a relevant modifier only for density and duration.
We observed the same sleep spindle characteristics in both age groups except for localization. We built our study on a short sample, and participants were not free of all sleep disorders. We could establish normative values through further studies with larger samples of people without any sleep disorders to understand the modifications in normal aging and pathological conditions and to reveal the predictive biomarker function of sleep spindles.
睡眠及其结构会随着整个生命周期而受到影响和改变。我们知道宏观结构的主要变化是睡眠时间缩短、出现时间更早且更为碎片化。我们一直在通过睡眠、精神或神经认知障碍的病理改变来研究睡眠微结构，但我们仍然无法确定老年人和非常老年人的睡眠微结构是正常的，是由于生理变化，还是未来出现障碍的征兆。我们想评估 75 岁以上个体的睡眠纺锤波特征与年轻个体相比的年龄相关性变化。
这是一项基于回顾性和比较性实验室多导睡眠图数据的探索性研究，这些数据是在 75 岁以上人群的常规护理中登记的，与 65-74 岁人群进行比较。我们研究了他们在 N2 和 N3 睡眠阶段的睡眠纺锤波特征（定位、密度、频率、振幅和持续时间）。使用年龄、性别和 OSA 进行 ANOVA 和 ANCOVA。
我们纳入了 36 名年龄大于 75 岁的参与者和 57 名年龄在 65-74 岁之间的参与者。两个组中最常见的诊断是 OSA。老年人需要更多的药物来改善睡眠。75 岁后，纺锤波定位变得更加集中。N2 和 N3 睡眠阶段以及慢波和快波之间的其他睡眠纺锤波特征的变化与文献数据一致，但年龄仅对密度和持续时间有影响。
除了定位，我们在两个年龄组中观察到了相同的睡眠纺锤波特征。我们的研究样本量较小，参与者并非没有任何睡眠障碍。我们可以通过进一步的研究建立更大的、没有任何睡眠障碍的样本的正常参考值，以了解正常衰老和病理条件下的变化，并揭示睡眠纺锤波的预测生物标志物功能。
