A Clinical and Polysomnographic Study of Parkinson's Disease Patients with Sleep Benefit

Chun, D Y; Yang, C K; Kim, J W; Yoo, S Y; Hahn, H M

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
Pakinson's disease(PD) patients may experience fluent mobility upon awakening from a night's sleep, which is called sleep benefit(SB). Although SB is a phenomenon closely associated with sleep, sleep features of PD are not well characterized. The objectives of this study were, first, to investigate if there are any clinical characteristic feathures between patients with SB and without SB(NSB), and second, to examine if SB patients are associated with any specific sleep variables compared with NSB patients.
METHODS
Thirty-three PD patient (14 men and 19 women) participated in this study. All subjects were interviewed to examine whether or not they had SB and overnight polysomnography was performed at the sleep center. Various clinical variables were collected through medical record review.
RESULTS
The 331 PD patients were divided into 16 SB group (48.5%)and 17 NSB group (51.5%). SB patients were younger (p<0.02), had higher sleep efficiency (p<0.05), and showed shortened sleep latency (p<0.02)as compared with NSB patients. However, no difference was found between SB and NSB with respect to gender, duration or stage of PD, antiparkinsonian medications prescribed, and predominant motor symptoms. SB did not clearly relate to a specific sleep stage and other sleep variables except sleep efficiency and sleep latency. Although primary snoring was more prevalent in SB patients (p<0.05), other sleep disorders were seen with equal frequency in SB and NSB groups.
CONCLUSION
Our results suggest that good sleep efficiency, shortened sleep latency, and age may have an effect on morning motor function( i.e.,SB) in Parkinson's disease.