Vascular brain injury modifies the relationship between sleep duration, cognition, and white matter hyperintensity burden in the Alzheimer's disease continuum.

Authors

Soraya Lahlou, Zahinoor Ismail, Eric E Smith, Thien Thanh Dang-Vu, AmanPreet Badhwar

Published in

Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association. Volume 22. Issue 10. Pages e71838.

Abstract

Self-reported sleep duration is associated with dementia-risk and vascular brain injury markers, including white matter hyperintensities (WMHs), yet how additional cerebrovascular pathology alters these relationships remains unclear.
In a deeply phenotyped cohort (735) including healthy and Alzheimer's disease (AD) continuum individuals (subjective and mild cognitive impairment [MCI], dementia [AD], MCI and AD with high vascular burden [+V]), sleep was assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Individuals were classified as WMH-only or WMH+ (WMHs with microbleeds, infarcts, or cerebral amyloid angiopathy). Linear models tested interactions between sleep duration, WMH+ status, and diagnostic group on WMH burden and cognition.
In MCI+V and AD, WMH+ significantly amplified the association between shorter sleep and greater WMH burden. In AD, longer sleep related to better cognition in WMH+ but worse cognition in WMH-only (exploratory).
Additional vascular brain injury modifies how sleep relates to WMH burden and cognition across the AD continuum, highlighting the importance of moving beyond WMHs alone.

PMID:
42861684
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 12 Oct 2026.

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