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People who experience sleep disorders are at greater risk of developing neurodegenerative conditions, including dementia, new research has found.
The study, conducted by researchers at Cardiff University, found that diagnoses of sleep disorder made people up to twice as likely to develop a neurodegenerative disease in the 15 years that followed.
The peer-reviewed study used data from more than a million electronic health records.
"This increased risk was occurring independently of genetic risk factors for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, with sleep disorders almost 'compensating' for low genetic risk," said Prof Valentina Escott-Price, from the UK Dementia Research Institute at Cardiff University.
