Is there a link between sleep and neurodegenerative disease? A study examines the question

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 08:41 AM

research – The study led by Gwenaëlle Catheline aims to confirm the hypothesis that poor sleep quality plays a role in the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease

What if sleeping poorly increased the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease? In France, 900,000 people suffer from this pathology, and this figure increases from year to year. Although it is currently impossible to treat this neurodegenerative disease, researchers are trying to understand how to delay its onset.

Gwenaëlle Catheline is one of them. Director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE-PSL), she has been studying the link between sleep and neurodegenerative diseases for more than ten years. The teacher-researcher receives the Desmaret Prize from the Pierre Deniker Foundation this Wednesday. Thanks to a check for 100,000 euros, she will be able to launch a vast study to verify, or not, her hypothesis: could poor sleep, ultimately, give rise to Alzheimer’s disease?

MRI and sleep sensor

In this project, Gwenaëlle Catheline and her team are looking for 500 volunteers aged over 55 who can travel to Bordeaux. They will analyze their sleep cycles and link them to brain markers obtained by imaging. “We are using new methods of analyzing the lymphatic system using MRI,” specifies the researcher.

“To assess sleep, we use actigraphy techniques. » Concretely, the researchers will give each volunteer a watch, “an activity meter” when they have their MRI. They will have to wear it for fifteen days, before returning it for data collection(…)