Objective: The current study aims to investigate the association of sleep characteristics with motor and non-motor dysfunctions of Parkinson’s disease (PD) in a single-center, observational, cross-sectional study.

Background: Sleep disorders are the most common and disabling symptoms for Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, and sleep-wake disturbances are reported to precede a diagnosis of parkinsonism in prodromal PD. Understanding the associations of sleep characteristics with motor and non-motor symptoms (NMSs) for PD can provide evidences to guide therapeutic interventions and nursing strategies.

Method: A total of 328 participants were included, and all participants underwent Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) evaluation and clinal assessments of PD symptoms. We conducted Spearman correlation to evaluate the associations between sleep and PD symptoms, non-linear regression to assess the relationships between sleep habits and PD, and mediated analyses to test the effects of NMSs among global PSQI and PD severity, quality of life, as well as motor symptoms.

Results: Patients with poorer sleep were linked to more severe PD characteristics, as well as motor and NMSs. Besides, there were significant non-linear relationships of sleep habits with motor and non-motor symptoms in PD individuals. The reflection point for bedtime was around 21:52 associated with motor symptoms, and insufficient and excessive total time spent in bed and nocturnal sleep duration were correlated to higher NMS burdens. The optimal points were 8-9.2 hours and 6.2-6.9 hours respectively, suggesting that the proper sleep duration was approximately 6-7 hours per day. It was also discovered that NMSs played mediating roles of global sleep with the quality of life, PD stages and motor symptoms to a varying range of 6.8-95.4%.

Conclusion: In summary, our cross-sectional study indicates a close relationship between sleep characteristics and the burden of PD symptoms in PD population. Poor sleep quality and efficiency, as well as insufficient or excessive sleep duration, are associated with more severe PD symptoms, including PD stages, motor symptoms, NMSs and quality of life. Therefore, our findings provide new insights of monitoring and management between sleep and PD, and need to further explore in future studies.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/worse-sleep-quality-aggravates-the-motor-and-non-motor-symptoms-in-parkinsons-disease/