Scientists from France and the UK concluded that lack of sleep can lead to the development of dementia in old age.

The work was published in the journal Nature Communication. Sleep disturbance is known to be one of the hallmarks of dementia.. But it is still unknown whether its duration is associated with the development of this disease.. The problem is that many experiments on the relationship between sleep duration and dementia are of relatively short duration and concerned only the study of older people who have just begun to show symptoms of dementia..

Meanwhile, it is known that the development of the disease can occur over tens of years.. To look at the longer term, a team of scientists from the University of Paris (France) and University College London (UK) analyzed data from a longitudinal study of the health of more than 10,000 British civil servants, which began in 1985 and spans over 30 years..

It contains data on the duration of sleep of these people, as well as the first signs of dementia.. After analyzing this information, the researchers concluded that regular sleep deprivation between the ages of 50 and 70 increases the risk of developing dementia by 30 percent compared to normal duration of sleep (in the study, it was defined as seven hours a day, prolonged sleep - eight and.

It is independent of socio-demographic, behavioral, cardiometabolic and other mental health factors. Despite the promising conclusions, the authors warn that their results are only observational in nature, that is, the correlation is clearly present here, but it does not yet mean the presence of causality..