Sleep and Wakefulness Disorders in Vascular Cognitive Impairment

Abstract

Dementia is a pathology that leads to disability and significantly affects the quality of life of patients and their relatives. The study and development of treatment methods for dementia is a priority in medicine, given the rate of growth in the number of patients. Vascular dementia is the second most common type of dementia in the world after Alzheimer disease. Poor sleep quality is a common feature of the neuropsychiatric profile in dementia patients. Sleep disorders are a modifiable and significant risk factor for cardiovascular disorders, in particular, vascular cognitive impairment. Several sleep disorders are more pronounced in patients with vascular dementia than in patients with dementia due to Alzheimer disease. This review contains data on changes in the sleep-wake cycle, often found in vascular cognitive impairments. The likely mechanisms connecting sleep disorders and vascular cognitive impairments are described. The possibility of predicting the development of vascular cognitive impairment based on identified sleep disorders is shown, as well as the potential for studying and developing methods to treat sleep disturbances to prevent vascular cognitive impairment are presented.

Keywords

• vascular cognitive impairment
• sleep-wake disorders
• dementia
• alzheimer disease
• apnoea