Alzheimer’s From a New Light 

August 9, 2018

The search is on for new drugs to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, and while there have been some recent breakthroughs, we are still many years away from promising drugs being on the market. In the meantime, caretakers are left with the task of working around the condition and trying to find ways to alleviate sufferers’ symptoms. Enter light therapy. 

In a new study shared at the Alzheimer’s Association annual meeting last week in Chicago, it was found that lighting intervention, or light therapy, designed to stimulate dementia patients’ circadian rhythm (which regulates sleep and wake cycles) led to notable decreases in sleep disturbance, depression and agitation. This  nonpharmacological treatment has shown promise to help regulate abnormal sleep-wake patterns and associated behavioral issues prevalent among individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia. 

“One of the main reasons Alzheimer’s disease patients are institutionalized is lack of sleep and [increase in] behavior issues,” reported the study’s author, Mariana Figueiro, director of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y in an article for Web MD.  

“This is a very simple solution,” Figueiro added. “It has worked with over half of patients, if not more. Even if it can help half of the people exposed to [the light], that’s a pretty good outcome.” 

To conduct the study, Figueiro and her team tested the lighting interventions on 43 nursing home residents in three different states for four weeks, and 37 nursing home residents for six months. The tailored lighting included either a custom-designed LED light table or individual room lighting, depending on where patients spent most of their time during the day. Personal light meters monitored the patients’ exposures. 

The goal was to produce lighting that stimulated the body’s circadian rhythm, which triggers the release of the hormone melatonin in the brain that regulates normal sleep-wake cycles. The nature of nursing homes means that residents are exposed to variances in artificial light at all hours—even at night—thus disrupting their sleep-wake patterns, Figueiro noted.  

At the conclusion of the four week test period, sleep disturbance and depression scores in patients exposed to the tailored light intervention declined significantly. By the end of six month period, sleep disturbance scores were lowered by about half. Depression scores among the light-exposed were less than half of baseline levels, on average, the researchers reported. 

Figueiro feels that it shouldn’t be a great expense for nursing homes and other memory care facilities to install lighting similar to what was used in the research. Not long ago, one of the obstacles to light therapy intervention was technology. However, LED lighting is much more accessible and affordable today.  

It’s also a relatively simple task for nursing home staffers to bring patients outdoors with more frequency in order to take advantage of natural light, Figueiro said. Skylights and other architectural features that bring more light inside should be considered as well.  

This study, presented July 24th at the Alzheimer’s Association annual meeting in Chicago, hasn’t been peer-reviewed or published, and results are considered preliminary. 

Source: https://www.alz.org/aaic/releases_2018/AAIC18-Tues-non-cognitive-symptoms.asp 

 

 

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