Subjective Quality Sleep in Healthy Elderly and Mild Cognitive Impairment

Aging is associated with physiological decline involving psychological, behavioral, and cognitive domains. Older people may develop Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), a risk state prodromal to dementia. Aging is characterized by changes in the structure and quality of sleep, which is a fundamental aspect of life. When sleep alterations become substantial, they can generate or accelerate cognitive decline. Indeed, altered sleep represents one of the first symptoms of dementia. This work aimed to analyze sleep quality in healthy and MCI participants. One hundred sixty-eight adults participated in the study: 84 MCI participants with a mean age of 59.82±6.86 and 84 healthy participants with a mean age of 60.29±7.15. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was administered to assess subjective sleep quality. ANOVA was performed and significant differences emerged only in the daytime sleepiness scale. This result can be explained by the high prevalence of poor sleep quality (PSQI>5) both in the healthy (72.62%) and in the MCI (79.76%) samples. These data suggest that daytime sleepiness, which is an indirect index of poor sleep quality, can be considered as a predictor of MCI.