Langzeit-Elektroenzephalographie bei Parkinson-Patienten mit und ohne Schlafattacken

The phenomenology of sleep attacks in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is still unknown. Here we investigated 7 matched pairs of PD patients with and without sleep attacks by continuous polysomnography (PSG). We did not observe any significant differences between both groups with respect to night-time PSG. The cumulative duration of microsleep episodes was 27.7±20 min in patient with sleep attacks vs. 6.4±4.1 min in patients without sleep attacks (p=0.03). This difference was at least partly due to the fact that patients with sleep attacks were allowed to suffer from daytime sleepiness. All identified sleep attacks (n=12) were characterized by NREM stage 1 and 2 sleep. Five sleep attacks lasted less than 120 sec and accordingly fulfilled our criteria of microsleep episodes. However, the majority of microsleep episodes was not perceived by the patients. Our study strongly suggests that sleep attacks are intrusions of NREM stage 1 and 2 sleep into wakefulness and often identical to microsleep episodes. It can be hypothesized that patients with sleep attacks are less habituated to the sensation of daytime sleepiness and therefore perceive at least some microsleep episodes as sleep attacks.