Can PAP Prevent Cognitive Decline?
This study includes a lot of participants, but it’s a meta-analysis, which means collating a lot of data from multiple studies to see if salient findings arise. Professionally, I tend to give scant credibility to meta-analyses, because if all the studies measured the wrong things or were otherwise conducted poorly, then it doesn’t really promote much confidence in the findings. One great study is worth far more in terms of advancing scientific knowledge compared to probably 95% of all published meta-analyses.
The collection of samples in this published study yielded more than 60,000 participants, again something that can be misleading for the same reasons noted above. However, I wanted to post this research, because so many variations on the same theme are getting published. That is, there seems to be the distinct possibility that “early” use of PAP therapy will prevent or delay cognitive decline in those predisposed, e.g. those with dementia or age-related changes.
While this study does not prove anything, and the authors point out this limitation, growing evidence is clearly moving in the direction to suggest better sleep quality is likely a therapy for cognitive symptoms. And, most likely this theory probably relates to the impact of greater sleep quality enhancing the function of the glymphatic system.