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Are Sleep Disturbances Preclinical Markers of Parkinson’s Disease?

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Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurobehavioral disorder characterized by motor symptoms and signs, and non-motor abnormalities such as olfactory dysfunction, pain, sleep disorders and cognitive impairment. Amongst these alterations, sleep disturbances play an important role in the pathology, but presence of disturbed sleep is not currently considered in diagnosis. However, sleeping problems may precede by many years the classic motor abnormalities of PD and should be clinically evaluated as a potential marker before disease onset. The first disturbance reported with this potential was the disorder REM sleep behaviour and currently several other disturbances have gained importance as potential markers, such as excessive daytime sleepiness, restless legs syndrome and new evidence also points to changes in circadian rhythms. Here we present a brief review of the major evidence indicating that sleep disturbances precede the motor symptoms in PD and neurodegeneration occurs in regions that could underlie these phenomena in order to provide support for the conclusion that disturbances of sleep should be considered as valuable preclinical markers for PD.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia, Vitória Da Conquista, Brazil

    Altair B. dos Santos

  2. Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Kristi A. Kohlmeier

  3. Departmento de Nutrición y Bioquímica, Facultad de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá DC, Colombia

    George E. Barreto

Authors
  1. Altair B. dos Santos
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  2. Kristi A. Kohlmeier
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  3. George E. Barreto
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Correspondence to George E. Barreto.

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dos Santos, A.B., Kohlmeier, K.A. & Barreto, G.E. Are Sleep Disturbances Preclinical Markers of Parkinson’s Disease?. Neurochem Res 40, 421–427 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11064-014-1488-7

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