老年人忽然變嗜睡？小心患上癡呆癥

Older adults who started sleeping more than nine hours a night — but had not previously slept so much — were at more than double the risk of developing dementia a decade later than those who slept nine hours or less, researchers report.

研究人員公布的研究結果稱，每晚睡眠時間開始超過九小時但之前不會睡這么長時間的老年人，十年后患癡呆癥的風險是那些睡眠時間不超過九小時的人的兩倍多。

The increased risk was not seen in people who had always slept more than nine hours.

在睡眠時間一直在九小時以上的人群中，沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)風險增加的現(xiàn)象。

“We’re not suggesting you go wake up Grandpa. We think this might be a marker for the risk of dementia, not a cause” of the illness, said Dr. Sudha Seshadri, a professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine and the senior author of the study, in Neurology.

“我們并不是建議老爺爺早起。我們覺得這也許是癡呆癥風險的一個標志，而不是病因，”波士頓大學醫(yī)學院(Boston University School of Medicine)神經(jīng)學教授、發(fā)表在《神經(jīng)學》(Neurology)上的這篇論文的第一作者蘇達·塞沙德里(Sudha Seshadri)說。

Using data from 2,457 people, average age 72, who were part of a study in Framingham, Mass., the researchers found that those with a new habit of excessive slumber were at a greater risk of all forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s, which is characterized by a buildup of beta amyloid, a toxic protein fragment that forms plaques in the brain.

曾有2457人參加了馬薩諸塞州弗雷明漢的一項研究，他們平均年齡72歲。通過他們的數(shù)據(jù)，研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，養(yǎng)成了睡眠時間過長的新習慣的人，患包括阿爾茨海默氏癥在內(nèi)的各種癡呆癥的風險更高。阿爾茨海默氏癥的特征是β-淀粉樣蛋白累積。β-淀粉樣蛋白是一種有毒的蛋白質(zhì)碎片，會在大腦中形成斑塊。

“My suspicion is that this is a compensatory mechanism: that at a time when amyloid is building up in the brain, people may be sleeping longer as the body is reacting and trying to remove it from the brain,” Dr. Seshadri added, cautioning that is only a hypothesis.

“我懷疑，這是一種補償機制：淀粉樣蛋白在大腦中積累時，人的睡眠時間可能會變長是因為人體正在做出反應，試圖將之從大腦中清理出去，”塞沙德里表示，但又告誡稱這只是一種假設。