A new study has found that older women with both sleep apnea and insomnia may face a higher risk of memory problems.
Interestingly, this link was not found in older men with the same sleep issues. The findings could help doctors better understand how sleep affects memory and brain health in older adults, especially women.
Sleep apnea is a condition where breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep. Insomnia is when a person has trouble falling or staying asleep.
When someone has both conditions, it is called COMISA, which stands for co-morbid insomnia and sleep apnea. Each condition alone can affect health and sleep quality, but researchers wanted to know what happens when both occur together.
In this study, researchers looked at 110 adults between the ages of 65 and 83. All participants had been diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. They completed sleep studies, memory tests, and answered questions about their sleep habits. About 37% of them were also found to have insomnia, meaning they had COMISA.
The study found that people with both insomnia and sleep apnea had worse verbal memory than those with just sleep apnea. Verbal memory is the ability to remember words, like recalling a list of items or remembering something someone told you.
This difference in memory was still noticeable even after taking into account age, body weight, how severe the sleep apnea was, and how much education each person had.
But when researchers looked more closely, they found something unexpected. The memory problems only showed up in women—not in men.
This was surprising because women usually do better than men on memory tests that involve words. The fact that COMISA seemed to erase that advantage could mean there is a hidden link between poor sleep and brain health in older women.
One possible explanation is that sleep affects men and women differently. When the researchers looked at sleep patterns, they found that women with COMISA had less rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and more deep slow-wave sleep compared to men.
REM sleep is thought to play an important role in memory and brain function. If women with COMISA are getting less REM sleep, that might help explain their memory problems.
Past research has already shown that women with untreated sleep apnea are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. This new study adds to that concern and suggests that having both insomnia and sleep apnea could be especially risky for women’s memory and brain health.
Lead author Breanna Holloway, a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego School of Medicine, said she expected that memory would be worse for both men and women with COMISA. But only the women were affected. She believes that recognizing and treating COMISA early—especially in women—might help protect memory and lower the risk of dementia.
Dr. Atul Malhotra, a senior researcher on the study, emphasized that sleep disorders often go undiagnosed, especially in women. He and his team believe these results support the need for sex-specific screening and treatment strategies.
The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine and provides new insight into how sleep and memory are connected. It also shows that sleep problems may affect women and men in different ways. With this information, doctors might be able to catch and treat memory risks earlier in older women who have trouble sleeping.
If you care about brain health ,please read studies about Vitamin B9 deficiency linked to higher dementia risk, and cranberries could help boost memory.
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The study is published in Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
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