Adam Spira from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health has completed a longitudinal cohort study that established a correlation between frequent, unintentional daytime napping and an increased risk of developing dementia among the elderly population.
The analysis utilized data from 995 individuals participating in the nationally representative American NHATS study. These participants were over 65 years old and showed no signs of dementia in 2013. During that period, they provided information on how often, how spontaneously, and for how long they slept during the day.
Later, in 2023, these same individuals were diagnosed with possible or probable dementia using an approved algorithm. The link between daytime sleep and dementia risk was analyzed using discrete-time complementary double logarithmic models.
The results of this study were officially published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A.