Sleep disturbances linked to genetic Alzheimer's risk

14 Aug 2026, 22:40 · Medical Xpress

by Dennis Thompson

edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Alexander Pol

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A person's sleep patterns could be an early sign of Alzheimer's disease, a new study says. A greater number of micro-awakenings during sleep is linked to a greater genetic risk for Alzheimer's, researchers report in the journal Sleep.

In fact, more frequent micro-awakenings go hand in hand with that genetic risk, long before any memory problems arise, according to a team from the University of Liege in Belgium.

"Sleep could become an accessible marker for the early identification of vulnerable individuals," senior researcher Gilles Vandewalle said in a news release.

It's well-known that people with Alzheimer's have sleep problems, but sleep hasn't been established as an early indicator of the disease, researchers noted.

For the new study, researchers tracked the sleep of more than 500 healthy people, using brain recordings to note the number of times they woke throughout the night. These "micro-awakenings" are brief periods of brain activity that do not fully wake a person but can disrupt their sleep cycle.

The team compared these awakenings to each person's genetic risk score for developing Alzheimer's disease.

Results showed that a greater frequency of awakenings among late-middle-aged adults (average age: 59) was linked to greater genetically driven odds of developing Alzheimer's disease. The same wasn't observed among younger adults.

"These micro-awakenings are therefore not insignificant," co-author Puneet Talwar, a research assistant at the university, said in a news release. "Certain profiles could promote the accumulation of proteins involved in Alzheimer's disease and be associated with increased vulnerability."

Researchers suspect these awakenings could be linked to the locus coeruleus, a place in the brainstem about the size of a grain of rice that is involved in wakefulness, attention and sleep regulation.

The locus coeruleus is one of the first brain regions where abnormal protein deposits linked to Alzheimer's start to appear, sometimes as early as a person's teen years, researchers said. This region is also closely linked to sleep quality.

"This region is difficult to observe, but it appears to play a role in the early mechanisms linked to the disease," Vandewalle said.

However, researchers noted that their study does not prove a direct cause-and-effect link between sleep problems and Alzheimer's and that more study is needed to understand the association.

Publication details

Nasrin Mortazavi et al, Sleep arousals are associated with the polygenic risk for developing Alzheimer's disease and with cognitive change in healthy late middle-aged individuals, SLEEP (2026). DOI: 10.1093/sleep/zsag143

Journal information: Sleep

Key medical concepts

Locus Coeruleus

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NeurologySleep & RecoverySleep medicineHealthy aging Who's behind this story?

Sadie Harley

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