By Laura Sanders, Science News
Vivid, violent dreams can portend brain disorders by half a century, a new study finds. ..
People with a mysterious sleep disturbance called REM sleep behavior disorder, or RBD, experience a sudden change in the nature of dreams. Dreams increasingly become more violent and frequently involve episodes in which an attacker must be fought off. The normal muscle paralysis that accompanies dreams is gone, leaving the dreamer, who is most often male, to act out the dream’s punches, twists and yells. In many cases, a person sharing the dreamer’s bed can be injured.
Doctors used to think of RBD as an isolated disorder. But follow-up studies revealed that a striking number of these patients later develop neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia. The exact figures vary, but some studies find that anywhere from 80 to 100 percent eventually get a neurodegenerative disorder.
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Of the 27 patients who fit the criteria (of which only three were women, reflecting the curious male predominance of RBD), the median interval between onset of the sleep disorder and of the neurological disorder was 25 years, the team found. For six of these patients, Boeve says, the sleep disorder was first noticed by their spouse on their honeymoon or shortly afterward. In one case, RBD preceded Parkinson’s disease by 50 years.
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The 50-year interval uncovered in the study is an “extraordinarily long and slow lag period,” Schenck says. “That’s the big news.”
Such a long interval brings the hope that once a “mysterious and magical neuroprotective agent is identified,” Schenck says, it could be used before the brain is damaged severely. Some researchers think that by the time dementia symptoms appear, it is already too late to undo the damage.
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/08/04/violent-dreams-may-predict-illness-in-advance.html
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