Alfa Sleep

Alfa Sleep is a cross-sectional study aimed at deepening the relationship between sleep disorders and the onset or progression of Alzheimer's disease.

The project envisages visiting 200 participants from the Alfa Study over a two-year period, from whom detailed information on their sleep quality will be taken using polysomnigraphy, actigraphs and orexin neuropeptide analysis. These data will be correlated with cognition data, cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers, and neuroimaging tests previously acquired in the Alfa + study.

Although the relationship between insomnia and cognition is widely studied, the mechanisms behind this association are not yet well understood. Alfa Sleep's hypothesis is that lower sleep quality is associated with increased pathological accumulation of Alzheimer's-linked tau and beta amyloid proteins, and changes in brain structure and function.

Alfa Sleep is funded by two competitive projects from the Alzheimer’s Association Research Fellowship Program and the Carlos III Institute of Health.