The relationship between sleep, age and psychomotor performance in older adults with HIV

Abstract

Little is known regarding sleep patterns of older adults with HIV. The primary goal of this study was to utilize multiple methods to assess sleep patterns in an older (50+ years) HIV positive group, and compare them to older HIV negative and younger HIV positive control groups. In addition, the study examined the relation between sleep indices and psychomotor function. Study participants were recruited from a longitudinal neurologic study of HIV positive adults. The participants (38 HIV+ older, 31 HIV-older, and 16 HIV+ younger groups) wore a wrist actigraph to monitor sleep, and completed a sleep diary for the 3 consecutive nights before their annual assessments. They also completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), which reported typical sleep patterns over the previous month. The older HIV positive participants reported higher rates of disturbed sleep compared to the control groups. Seventy-one % of the HIV+ older group, vs. 39 % of the older HIV-group, and 40 % of the younger HIV+ group reported global PSQI scores in the "sleep disturbed" range. When comparing the older HIV positive group to the control groups, the older HIV positive group had significantly poorer sleep quality than the HIV negative group, as reported by PSQI global score (M = 7.6, SD = 3.6 for HIV positive vs. M = 4.4, SD = 2.8 for HIV negative), and sleep diary (M = 2.9, SD = 0.84 for HIV positive vs. M = 3.5, SD = .74 for HIV negative). There was no significant difference between the older HIV+ group and younger HIV+ group for any of the reported sleep variables. There were no significant differences between the older HIV+ group and control groups for total sleep time, sleep onset latency, number of awakenings, sleep efficiency. In linear regression models, aggregated measures of sleep quality did not account for a significant amount of the variance in an aggregated measure of the psychomotor scores. While there were no differences between the older HIV positive group and the control groups for quantitative sleep measures, the older participant group clearly experienced poorer perceived sleep quality.