Sleep disturbances and racial-ethnic disparities in 10-year dementia risk among a national sample of older adults in the USA

Abstract

Race/ethnicity and sleep disturbances are associated with dementia risk.

To explore racial-ethnic disparities in sleep disturbances, and whether race/ethnicity moderates the relationship between sleep disturbances and dementia risk among older adults.

We analysed ten annual waves (2011-2020) of prospective cohort data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study, a nationally representative USA sample of 6284 non-Hispanic White ( = 4394), non-Hispanic Black ( = 1311), Hispanic ( = 342) and non-Hispanic Asian ( = 108) community-dwelling older adults. Sleep disturbances were converted into three longitudinal measures: (a) sleep-initiation difficulty (trouble falling asleep within 30 min), (b) sleep-maintenance difficulty (trouble falling asleep after waking up early) and (c) sleep medication usage (taking medication to sleep). Cox proportional hazards models analysed time to dementia, after applying sampling weights and adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics and health.

Black, Hispanic and Asian respondents exhibited higher frequencies of sleep-initiation and sleep-maintenance difficulties, but had less sleep medication usage, compared with White older adults. Among Hispanic respondents, sleep-initiation difficulty was associated with significantly decreased dementia risk (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) = 0.34, 95% CI 0.15-0.76), but sleep-maintenance difficulty was associated with increased dementia risk (aHR = 2.68, 95% CI 1.17-6.13), compared with White respondents. Asian respondents using sleep medications had a significantly higher dementia risk (aHR = 3.85, 95% CI 1.64-9.04). There were no significant interactions for Black respondents.

Sleep disturbances are more frequent among older Black, Hispanic and Asian adults, and should be considered when addressing dementia disparities. Research is needed to explore how certain sleep disturbances may elevate dementia risk across different racial and ethnic subgroups.